By Mark Kreidler
October
25, 2019
Teenagers don’t get enough sleep,
and California’s effort to fix the problem may serve as a wake-up call to other
states’ lawmakers.
A law
recently signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that mandates later start times for
most students — no earlier than 8 a.m. in middle school and 8:30 a.m. in high
school — is the first statewide response in the United States to overwhelming
evidence that chronic lack of sleep impairs teens.
But it
is hardly the only attempt to address the issue.
Individual
cities, regions and school districts across the U.S. have tried for years to
afford their students the sleep benefits of later school starts.
Their
efforts are just one aspect of a broader societal phenomenon so harmful that the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention declared it a public health epidemic five
years ago. Simply put, a staggering number of Americans — or, better said, a
number of staggering Americans — don’t get enough sleep.
There
is no simple way to alter that reality, a reminder of which will be heard early
in the morning on Sunday, Nov. 3 as Daylight Saving Time ends, bringing with it
the usual spate of sleep-related complications.
Last
November, nearly 60% of California voters backed a ballot proposition to end
twice-a-year clock changes, in part because of the havoc they wreak on sleep.
State legislators followed with a bill to put
California on permanent Daylight Saving time.
It
passed the Assembly earlier this year but is now on hold until 2020.
Assemblyman Kansen Chu (D-San Jose), who introduced the legislation, said he
wanted more time to explore the option of going on permanent standard time.
Only
two states — Arizona and Hawaii — do not move their clocks every spring and
autumn. Both abandoned the system in the late 1960s, noting that their
residents receive plenty of sunlight year round.
Other states, including
Minnesota, Florida and several more, have considered legislation to remain on
Daylight Saving Time year-round. Oregon already
passed a law to do so. But since legislators there wanted all the clocks on the
West Coast showing the same time, their law is on hold until Washington and
California do the same.
And to
make the problem even more complicated, any state that jettisons biannual clock
changing still needs approval from Congress.
The
specifics of California’s new school law reflect the complexity of any kind of
change to the sleep patterns of Americans. The bill exempts some of the state’s
rural districts, makes allowances for optional “zero period” early classes, and
is being phased in over three years.
A bill
with similar provisions was rejected by lawmakers in 2017 and vetoed by then-Gov.
Jerry Brown in 2018. Critics say local communities and school boards should be
able to decide their own start times. And they argue that the law will
disproportionately affect lower-income families, who cannot alter their morning
work schedules to accommodate later rides to school — though some lucky parents
may be able to get more sleep.
The
momentum toward later starting times for students, who researchers say need
close to nine hours of sleep a night, has been gathering for some time. And research
in places that made the change have shown it is beneficial to students.
Many
schools in the Minneapolis area moved back high-school start times 20 years
ago, and found that students
were generally more alert, less stressed and less likely to fall asleep in
class.
In
Kentucky’s Jessamine County, a 2002 switch from 7:30 a.m. to 8:40 a.m. for high
school students had several immediate effects, among them increases in attendance and standardized test scores.
Seattle in 2016 moved to an 8:45 a.m. start, nearly an hour later than the
previous one; it has resulted in students getting more than a half-hour of extra
sleep, according to research. Portsmouth, N.H. schools
also moved to later start times the same year.
And
there is some momentum at statewide levels, too. Days after Newsom signed the
law, a legislator in Ohio introduced a bill that no school start before 8:30 a.m. —
though its author was less concerned with sleep than with early-morning safety
issues. Lawmakers in Indiana, South Carolina and New Jersey are also among
those studying later start times.
The
movement may ultimately make economic sense: Moving the first bell to 8:30 a.m.
across America’s middle and high schools could add $9.3 billion to the
economy in the next year, and $83 billion over a decade — all
because of improved sleep, health and mental acuity, according to a study by
the Rand Corporation, the Santa Monica., Calif.-based think tank.
Well-established
scientific research draws a direct line between less sleep and health — not
just for developing adolescents, but for adults, too.
“The
shorter your sleep, the shorter your life,” University of California-Berkeley
neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker wrote
in his bestselling book, Why We Sleep.
Despite
this knowledge, however, “the trend is going the other way,” said Aric Prather,
associate professor of psychiatry at UC-San Francisco, who studies and works
with patients on sleep-related problems.
The
number of Americans who say they don’t get even the minimum recommended seven hours of sleep
per night has increased significantly since 2013, and nearly one-third of
Americans now say they sleep six hours or less.
Chronic
sleep disruption has been linked to a weakened immune system, low sex drive,
loss of memory, increased likelihood of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and
impaired thinking, as well as higher risks of accidents, obesity, loneliness
and low-grade depression.
Put it
together, and those who habitually get too little sleep are going to wind up
with shorter, unhappier lives.
It’s
enough to keep you up at night.
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