The Power of the Pillow
- Samuel White
- Jan 15
- 8 min read
Abstract
This article identifies and investigates the viability of two commonly proposed solutions to preventing sleep deprivation among adolescent middle- and high-school students: in-school rest periods and starting school later. The former solution of school nap times is thought to provide students in the middle of the day with the energy and subsequent cognitive focus to concentrate on learning during the school day. The latter solution of later school start times allows preteen and teenage students to sleep in, aligning with the natural later-sleeping and later-waking circadian rhythms of adolescence. Concerns from parents and school faculty arise over nap times detracting from instructional time and later school start times detracting from time for transportation, homework, and after-school activities. Nevertheless, the cognitive, physical, and academic advantages of the two remedies to the adolescent sleep crisis are argued to resonate in school systems that enact a solution. These benefits are expected to offset temporary issues of transportation and schedule adjustment and reorganization that arise from the initial implementation.
Introduction
Beep. Beep. Beep. The ringing 7:00 a.m. alarm jolts the groggy student awake, and they hurry to school by 8:00 a.m. After a flurry of classes with a speedy lunch in between, the student contends with extracurriculars and hours of homework before they doze off and restart this schedule. American adolescents fight against the current of classes in the breakless school schedule’s rapids. Eyes droop from the day’s non-stop information absorption. Daytime exhaustion from absorbing information all day is inevitable, but the tiredness is just one effect. According to Owens et al. (2014), decreased academic performance and psychological stress are primary consequences of insufficient sleep.
This phenomenon is not just reserved to so-called “lazy” adolescent students, either. Since 2010, the American Medical Association and American Academy of Sleep Medicine have officially recognized inadequate sleep as a health risk among all adolescents (as cited in Owens et al., 2014). Sleepiness is a threat to all students’ scholastic performance nationwide. But how can secondary schools stop student success from suffering? Two solutions appear–one stemming from American elementary and the other from European secondary schools. The first involves a scheduled nap time, and the second a postponement of the time school starts. Although these answers may seem impractical and childish, their holistic benefits for adolescents–maximized physiological development, heightened school performance, and overall daily cognitive astuteness, to name a few–are obvious. And more than ever, adolescents require these benefits as they navigate puberty and the burgeoning responsibilities of extracurricular activities, postsecondary school preparation, and entry into the workforce. To improve adolescent students’ daily focus, cognition, and mood, American middle and high schools should implement nap times or later school start times.
School Nap Times
Taking a page out of elementary schools’ book, scheduled nap times for older students would increase their alertness, memory skills, and thus overall studiousness. The circadian rhythm is the brain’s internal clock that instructs us when to rest and rise. To lull the body, the circadian rhythm releases the hormone melatonin to intensify people’s sleep pressure. According to Katznelson (2023), the body’s sleep pressure tends to peak between 1 and 4 p.m. Undoubtedly, students’ afternoon drowsiness, compounded by the demanding mental exertion of school, can subside with a sanctioned rest period.
Cognitive test studies have also found that midday naps are associated with heightened student cognition. A sleep study conducted by Lemos et al. (2014) used pop quiz performance to identify a link between student nap times and improved student memory. Additionally, the strategy game performance measured in a sleep study by Kang et al. (2017) found a positive association between daytime naps and boosted executive function in sleep-deprived teens. Middle and high schools are free to vary their nap times, ideally between 20 and 60 minutes. A powerful counter against the midday Sandman, scheduled sleep periods will lend students the alertness they need to continue actively learning content.
Like the siesta, the historical afternoon rest period in Spain, school nap times will give students a second wind to study the day’s remaining classwork. Secondary/middle and high school students require this second wind more urgently than their primary/elementary school counterparts, seeing as adolescents undergo the adolescent sleep delay phase (ASDP) during puberty. The ASDP’s combination of “delay on circadian timing system and the lengthening propensity to sleep as a consequence of slower accumulation of homeostatic sleep pressure during wakefulness” creates the “perfect storm” of teenagers growing sluggish by the second half of the school day (Santos et al., 2021, p. 189). So although the siesta has largely been phased out by the typical secondary student’s schedule in Spain, the country’s workplaces that continue to implement this cultural tradition among adolescent and adult workers yield “better employee engagement, well-being, and work culture, ultimately contributing to companies’ long-term success,” as an analysis by Alicea (2023) ascertained (p. 16). The same principle can apply to adolescents too, as school is commonly thought of as a teen’s full-time job.
Concerns over School Nap Times
A nap period is not a seamless remedy, however. Schools must adjust schedules to squeeze in equal content without a nap time. Ganesh et al. (2024) reported that children who nap, compared to their non-napping counterparts, tend to remember fewer words and numbers after rest. For these time and cognitive concerns, some schools refuse to add a nap period. Ganesh et al. (2024) concluded that adolescents do not require naps as much as younger children do, since for younger children, their “sleep pressure builds up faster than it does in older children” (p. 4). But nap time must not be written off as juvenile. A sleep literature review conducted by Santos et al. (2021) identified a biphasic sleep pattern, or sleeping at night with daytime naps in between, as a “compensatory strategy to nocturnal sleep restriction” for adolescents (p. 189). Rather than being reserved for little tikes, middle and high schools should include nap time to therapeutically benefit adolescents.
Since an energizing nap would prevent students from slacking off and losing focus during class, behavioral conduct would improve as well. Sleep literature supports the behavioral benefits of school naps, such as the studies conducted by Lemos et al. (2014) and Kang et al. (2017), which conclude sharpened focus among adolescent minds and the promotion of on-task behavior after school-sanctioned sleep periods. Naps would ultimately also recharge adolescent students for clubs, sports, and jobs after school. Furthermore, the evidence bolstering claims that naps worsen students’ memories focuses on young children, not teenagers. The proof is in the pudding–something students’ brains will avoid becoming after a refreshing rest.
Later School Start Times
Another policy to foster student success is later school start times. Delaying middle and high school to late morning is the key to solving the sleepy student case. During puberty, adolescents’ chronotype–the body’s preferred times of sleeping–delays, so they feel sleepier in the morning and more wakeful in the afternoon than they did when they were younger.
A clinical review of sleep literature by Minges & Redeker (2016) explained how early school start times conflict with this “phase delay [late-morning rising and late-night resting] during puberty development” (p. 86). Along with the physiological need for students to wake later, “social pressures rooted in voluntary and involuntary actions” such as the need to perform well in school or to socialize after an arduous afternoon and evening of extracurriculars and schoolwork compel students to pull all-nighters to study and text friends at night (Minges & Redeker, 2016, p. 87). These pressures lead to later adolescent sleep times, and later school start times can compensate for social and scholastic stressors that occupy students’ after-school periods. The clinical review’s findings demonstrated positive outcomes of school delay (from 25 to 60 minutes of delayed school start times from the standard) to increased student slumber (25 to 77 minutes of extra rest that students get before school starts) (Minges & Redeker, 2016). Creating studious, well-rested adolescents starts with a school system that accommodates their growing bodies.
Concerns over Later School Start Times
Proponents of earlier school start times, primarily parents, reject the viability of delaying school. While they care about adolescents getting enough sleep to perform well in school, concerns over extracurriculars, transportation, and school budgets trump their concern about the teen sleep crisis. A national pediatric health poll conducted in the United States by Davis et al. (2015) surveyed a national sample of parents of children in middle and high school about school start times. The majority (88%) had children whose schools started at or before 8:30 a.m., and of this majority, approximately half (49%) did not support a later school start time (Davis et al., 2015). Overall, opinions were mixed, as parents worried about the issue of arriving to work on time and thus needing to rearrange child transportation, school budget strain, and students not having enough of the afternoon for afterschool activities (Davis et al., 2015).
These fears are valid. Growing pains, whether budgetary or travel-based, are inevitable. After all, school system schedules must be overhauled for later middle and high school start times, and it may be difficult for the student to adjust to their new sleeping and waking habits. Outweighing this uncomfortable adjustment period, though, are the breadth of benefits later school start times bring to adolescents’ overall well-being. A sleep study by Afolabi-Brown et al. (2024) determined that adolescents thrive from later school start times. These delayed start times were positively correlated with higher test scores, attention levels, motor skills, punctuality, energy, and motor vehicle safety (Afolabi-Brown et al., 2024). It is advantageous and imperative for middle and high school students to catch extra Z’s from delayed start times. They help them not just in school, but in their body and on the road too. Teachers and administrators would also be more prepared from these later school start times, as they would enjoy more time before school for planning periods and faculty meetings. To compensate for lost extracurricular time in the afternoon due to this delayed start time, schools could implement sanctioned extracurricular periods and club meetings during the school day or shorter, but more frequent extracurricular meetings throughout the week.
Conclusion
Beep. Beep. Beep. That same alarm jolts the student out of their sweet dream, but now they feel energized with the extra rest. Although they sit in math class, the student is far from counting sheep. Completing coursework, acing tests, energetically focusing on after-school activities, and driving home without droopy eyes is their reality, and it is thanks to a mere midday nap or an hour of school delay, or even both. Middle and high schools must sharpen their students’ mental and physical acuity during their adolescence, a critical development phase in life. By implementing one or both policies, schools will surely graduate the best and brightest.
References
Afolabi-Brown, O., Moore, M. E., & Tapia, I. E. (2024). Sleep deficiency in adolescents: The school start time debate. Sleep Medicine Clinics, 19(4), 559-567.
Alicea, A. S. T. (2023). An analysis of the direct effect of siestas on: Local and multinational business in Spain. Bryant Digital Repository.
Davis, M. M., Clark, S. J., Singer, D. C., Matos-Moreno, A., Kauffman, A. D., & Hale, K. (2015). Parents conflicted about later school start times for teens. C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, 23(1).
Ganesh, D. B., Pandey, M., Riggins, T., Spencer, R. M. C., Tiwari, R., Wehland, M., & Leikin, S. (2024). Where did nap time go? Why older kids do not nap at school. Frontiers for Young Minds. http://doi.org/10.3389/frym.2023.1224593
Kang, K., Choi, J., Hwang, H., Koo, D. L., Kim, J. S., & Oh, B. (2017). A twenty-minute nap boosts the planning domain of executive function in sleep deprived late adolescents. Journal of Sleep Medicine, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.13078/jsm.17003
Katznelson, I. S. (2023). Why do I feel tired mid-afternoon? And how to stay energized. HealthBeat.
Lemos, N., Weissheimer, J., & Ribeiro, S. (2014). Naps in school can enhance the duration of declarative memories learned by adolescents. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 8(103). http://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00103
Minges, K. E., & Redeker, N. S. (2016). Delayed school start times and adolescent sleep: A systematic review of the experimental evidence. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 28, 86-95. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2015.06.002
Owens, J., Au, R., Carskadon, M., Millman, R., Wolfson, A., Braverman, P. K., Adelman, W. P., Breuner, C. C., Levine, D. A., Marcell, A. V., Murray, P. J., & O’Brien, R. F. (2014). Insufficient sleep in adolescents and young adults: An update on causes and consequences. Pediatrics, 134(3), 921-932. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2014-1696
Santos, J. S., Beijamini, F., & Louzada, F. M. (2021). Napping behavior in adolescents: Consensus, dissents, and recommendations. Sleep and Vigilance, 5, 189-196. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41782-021-00155-3
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