Chronic sleep debt can lead to poorer academic performance and can also impact a teenager’s daily health.
The equivalent of one night’s sleep lost per week. According to the conclusions of a study carried out by a team of researchers from the universities of Paris-Nanterre and Strasbourg for the Vinci Autoroutes Foundation and the National Federation of Schools, Parents and Educators, one in two adolescents sleeps less than 7 hours per night. and has chronic sleep debt.
115 family members made up of a teenager aged 14 on average, one or two parents and one or more brothers and sisters took part in this work. They took place in the form of individual and group interviews, but also questionnaires on sleep and quality of life. Monitoring by actimetry, an analysis of body movements during sleep, was also done.
The attitude of the parents pointed out
The total of 7 hours of sleep per night is extremely insufficient. According the Morpheus Networkan association specializing in the management of sleep disorders, “adolescents still have significant sleep needs. To be in shape, 9 hours of sleep on average are necessary for them.”
With BFMTV, several college girls confirm this downward trend, and describe the consequences of lack of sleep on their daily lives. “I watch Netflix and I fall asleep around 11:45 p.m.,” describes Keyla, in 5th grade. “We are tired the next day”, “sometimes I listen to the teachers and I go in my ideas, I can no longer follow”, abound two of his comrades.
If the National Academy of Medicine recently qualified as a “public health problem” the consequences of exposure to light from screens for children and adolescents, this new work particularly insists on the influence of the habits of parents on their children’s sleep cycle.
“If parents are attentive to sleep, to their own sleep, are attentive to that of their children, adolescents are imbued with this example and will themselves be more attentive to their sleep”, confirms to BFMTV Bernadette Moreau, general delegate of the Vinci Autoroutes Foundation, in charge of the study.
find your rhythm
This study also describes the consequences of lack of sleep in adolescents and points to deleterious effects on their quality of life, in particular on mood, school results and sports performance.
In order to protect once morest this, Eve Reynaud, post-doctoral researcher in charge of the study, lists some advice to BFMTV.
“You have to try to go to bed at the same time every night by promoting quiet times without screens before bedtime: reading, music or creative activity. You have to avoid sport too late at night, because there is a rise in adrenaline,” she says.
The compromise in school performance can be explained by 2017 work by Inserm researchers published in the journal Scientific Reports, who found that lack of sleep led to a decrease in the volume of gray matter in the brain of adolescents. This has been identified in the frontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and the precuneus, three regions of the brain precisely involved in attention and concentration.
The National Academy of Medicine also points to an increase in mood disorders (stress, anxiety-depression) and behavior with violence and hyperactivity as well as metabolic disorders.
