https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-025-01106-6
Abstract: “Aspects of modern society, such as artificial lighting and rigid schedules, create ‘social jetlag’ — a mismatch between biological chronotypes and societal demands. This circadian misalignment particularly affects evening chronotypes, leading to sleep deprivation, mental health issues and physical disorders. Flexible schedules and environmental modifications could restore natural sleep patterns and improve well-being.”
I don’t understand how going to bed early is a problem.
My high school started at 0800hrs. I had to be up by 0630hrs to catch the bus at 0715hrs, and it was a 15-minute walk to get to it. I went to bed some time between 2130hrs and 2230hrs almost every night like clockwork.
Did I get 10hrs of sleep? No. But the ≈8hrs I did get was enough to ensure I was awake and coherent in the morning.
If kids are tired in the morning, what’s stopping them from going to bed earlier? I was never forced to do so. I just did, because I was getting tired shortly after 2100hrs. I listened to my body.
the timings for school and its length were not dictated by health needs nor education needs.
it was chosen to match parents work schedule, and to aclimatize children to factory work.
so its not out of ignorance of the childs well-being, but indifference to it
it was chosen to match parents work schedule
I can’t find a good source, but from what I’ve seen its actually student work schedules that dictate school start times.
Elementary and Middle Schools tend to start much later in the day (in part to conserve buses). But local Chambers of Commerce and Rotary Club groups will often lobby for earlier high school start times so that students are out of school in time for a 5pm work shift.
In some countries the school start at 6.30 AM so that parents can take their children to school before they start work at 8 AM.
Could’ve gone to bed earlier.
Pouting intensifies
I mean I didn’t do that either when I was a kid but it was my own fault because I definitely could’ve hah. Still guilty of staying up way too long occasionally.
Idk, I think society has an unhealthy view of “Could’ve”. It’s the whole crazy aspect of personal responsibilities and guilt while letting the world continue to plunder and corrupt society (like the recycling program pushes or in this case making it too difficult for children to sleep).
You didn’t sleep healthily, so why do you think you could’ve? Sure, one night you could change it up, but repeated possitve behavioral pattern changes as a youth? Very unlikely
Children have known risk/reward problems. Society demands you stay up and communicate with your peers, also demands we are interesting and have things we are interested in and spend time on. Everyone else stayed up and played/watched this thing so you’re left out if you don’t. You literally spent all day at school, homework, destressing after you get home, house responsibilities, meals, you would only have time left to go to bed. A young mind isn’t going to just resolve to getting that sleep without some irresponsible fun to be had (even staying up reading a favorite book would fall into this category so not something unrealistic for all of us to do).
I don’t wish to downplay it, but reminds me of the confusion some people have around depression. Yes, this person could totally change their life with some actions, that doesn’t get rid of the mental aspect and only pushes it further down the road. You need supporting infrastructure, routines, and allies to work on making changes. Doesn’t just come from “doing” and all.
edit: is-to be
I mean parents do play a role in it, they should at least try harder to make kids go to bed earlier and prevent using devices all through the night. Kids aren’t great at making responsible decisions but that’s what parents are for.
Or we consider them capable enough and then really are responsible for those decisions, can’t really complain about early mornings being abuse if they’ve made their own decision to stay up too late.
Since the whole problem lies with parents’ work schedule, we should all push work time to begin at 10am instead of 8am, so kids can get to school a bit later in the morning. Everybody gets to sleep a bit more. Problem fucking solved
But then I would have to work until 8pm. That sounds horrible.
I was in my late 20s when I realised just how much stress morning stuff is causing me, and had caused me for two decades.
(my solution was just to come to the office at 11 most days & now I also sleep more hours on average, but that’s is a separate issue for me)Now think about what your parents went through
Started 7:15, lived an hour by bus away so I woke up at 5:10. Bus was at 5:36. That was some uphill both ways shit for me. We did have weekly intermittent afternoon and morning schedules though. So one week we’d start at 7:15 and one week it started at like 2PM. Afternoon weeks were nice when I’d come home at like 9 or 10PM.
Sounds like that would make it impossible to maintain a consistent sleep schedule, which is also helpful.
Just preparing everyone for shift work in the mines.
One reason for the early starts for high schools is that by staggering the start times for high school, middle school, and elementary school, school districts can use fewer buses and fewer drivers. If all the schools started at the same (more reasonable) time, you’d need three times as many buses and drivers and each driver would only get one or two hours a day (and thus would find something else to do, making the existing shortage of drivers even worse). The district I drive for has a transportation budget of about $3 million a year - we would not be able to afford $9 million a year and still afford our administrators’ enormous salaries.
If you just started all schools later by an hour, the elementary school kids would start at 9:30 AM which would not work out very well, either.
East Asian countries solve this by having the kids take public transit; just run a few extra buses and trains on the routes kids take, then you don’t need dedicated vehicles that sit idle all day.
With trains all you have to do is add an extra passenger car or two for the peak times and keep the number of trains running the same. You could also increase frequency during peak times if you have the track, train and driver availability to do that
I dunno, that sounds like socialism.
Good thing we were saved from the horrors of broadly accessible and efficient mass transit decades ago.
Could you imagine how dangerous mass transit would be if it was full of middle schoolers, calling out your biggest insecurities, while you’re just trying to get to work? John Mulaney educated us on the danger of them years ago.
Not sure which ones you’re talking about, but in Hong Kong, schoolchildren just walk to school. There’s usually a school attached to each housing estate.
Japan, Korea, mainland China
I think los angeles does this too, now.
You get a free pass as a student, but public transport in most of LA still requires a (relatively) long walk. Depending on where you live, might be a deal breaker.
It is much cleaner/safer than most people think though.
long walk
Really? Not my experience.
What’s your definition of long walk? If public transport is your only option, you have to take into consideration the fact you’ll occasionally be carrying heavy/bulky stuff.
I usually take 20-80 lbs
They don’t need to push everyone later, they just need to start the younger kids early, and the older kids later, which is the opposite of what most districts do now. Pre-teens have no problem getting up at 6AM.
Parents fight that because then they can’t have the older kids take care of the younger kids when they get home from school.
and those parents should be fought by cps
It’s not the parent’s fault the media has made them terrified of everything that they can’t let their kids just go around the neighborhood while they’re at work.
yes, but if they’re afraid of that they shouldn’t be having their other kids watch over their younger ones
What’s the alternative?
If I remember correctly most of the suggestions to account for that actually has elementary and middle schoolers start before high schoolers since high schoolers are the ones that need the most sleep while also struggling the most to go to sleep early
My school district solves this by not having busses at all
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Yours might not, but do you really think that’s the case everywhere?
Huh, that’s curious. I’m actually a school bus driver and I’ve been driving high school kids for four years now. Your use of “transit passes” makes me think you’re not a United Statesian.
Not sure what the comment you responded to was, but I used public transit to get to my junior high. The school provided me with a transit pass for free, which was really nice. I also live in the US. I actually only took the school bus to school for first grade.
First grade - school bus 2-6 - walking and they also did not have school buses for anyone but kindergarten 7-9 - transit, they also had no school buses 10-12 - I was either driven or drove. They did have school buses, but I wasn’t allowed to use them because I lived out of the district
Now, to be fair, I had a pretty unique situation with almost all of my schooling.
The elementary school, all of the kids that went were super close and lived in a super dense area, so walking was feasible and buses were not really needed
Junior high was a “choice” school. Meaning it was part of the public system, but it had a special theme to it and students had to request to go and they only let in a few students each year. If you did they in, you went to the normal school instead. The school had a total of 90 students and so buses were not feasible, especially since all the kids came from all over the district. They provided bus passes instead.
High school, I lived outside the district and had requested to go the school anyways, and part of the agreement to allow me to go was that I had to get my own way there. My older sibling could drive my first year and then I drove myself the next two years.
Not sure what the comment you responded to was
They said high school kids don’t take school buses … like, no high school kids do, which is manifestly untrue. I actually grew up in a town with no school buses at all, but that’s because we had a big state university there and the school district contracted with the university bus service to provide adequate route coverage to get kids to school.
I was an incredibly angsty teenager, mad at the world and hostile to just about everyone by default. Apathetic, grumpy, and uninterested in physical activity or the things I liked as a preteen.
After having a baby and getting very little sleep for 6 months I recognized some of my old patterns. Turns out, it wasn’t just part of being a teen, I was chronically sleep deprived. I was up at 6am most days back then, when I would sleep until 1pm on weekends. I think a lot of teens are unfairly characterized as angry and defiant when they’re operating on half or a quarter of the sleep they need.
Ah yes, I remember those accusations of grumpiness. It’s the classic “MY issues are because of the circumstances around me. YOUR issues are because that’s just who you are.” The lack of empathy so many adults express is truly concerning.
My mental health radically improved my senior year when I was ahead on credits and could skip the first block of classes each morning.
Yea that only happens because capitalism needs your parents to slave their ass off which can only happen if their kids go to school earlier than their already early starting job
Generally, I don’t think that applies to high schoolers. They can manage themselves in the morning. We should have their school start last
America also has some deep structural issues that children aren’t able to get to school by themselves. In Japan, grade school children are able to get to and from school by themselves in most of the country. In America, parents aren’t allowed to leave children unattended, and certainly aren’t allowed to let them go to school alone
Yea missed the part about high school but those time schedules pretty much sum up my primary school times as well, hence why the reply. high school is a bit of a grey area depending on the country, I agree.
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And god forbid your circadian rhythm doesn’t align and you fall asleep in class.
You can get referred for a drug test because only high people fall asleep during the day.
I had a friend trauma & sleep psychology profesor visiting; she said improvement of school performance with better scheduling was proven in few real life (cross-sectional?) studies.
I have always struggled with sleep onset insomnia. In an ideal world, I’d probably sleep from around 5 am until noon, and my best working hours are from 7pm until 11pm, without fail. Even when I am exhausted from forcing myself to get up early for an extended period, I’ll still perk up in the late evening, and struggle to sleep before 3am. This combined awfully with school.
I remember once that I was so exhausted, I literally fell asleep while walking, and I didn’t wake up when I hit the floor. What’s striking in hindsight is how little sympathy there was. I wasn’t accused of being a drug user, but there were plenty of comments about laziness, which is absurd given that I was obviously severely exhausted.
A friend was the primary carer for a disabled relative, and this required her to get up at 5am each day, and to get up during the night to administer medication. She would often fall asleep in class, and she frequently got detention for this (which she would then often need to skip, to ensure she could get home in time to pick up siblings from school). Speaking with her years later, she lamented that if teachers had been more sympathetic and actually tried to understand what was going on here, it might’ve led to there being formal support to care for her relative. The amount of work she was doing was absurd for anyone, let alone a 13 year old, but she didn’t know this, let alone that there were support channels to help young carers like her.
You can get referred for a drug test because only high people fall asleep during the day.
Let me guess: Murica’ ?
Yeppp
i highkey think school as it stands is child abuse.
i’m not a pedagogue or educator so i’m not versed on how to really articulate it, just had a constant feeling school was useless for learning, and felt like fucking prisons (and in retrospect i still think that’s true).
school 100% stunted my potential big time and i still fucking hate it for doing this and more. free our youth.
this image really resonated with me:
it’s from futurama btw, great show, i’m just re-watching it :D
This image inflicted mental damage on me :’(
Futurama really can tug the heartstrings.
School is just to prepare you for working in a capitalistic hellhole.
my country has been expanding the 48+ hour workweek instead of 40 for the last while, and sure enough schools are more and more starting to follow it.
My highschool used the same blueprints as the local prison, so… yep that all tracks and they don’t even try to hide it.
I learned more math from Khan Academy. If I knew about it, I would have started Khan Academy as soon as it existed (and bitcoin mining)
In my 30s and I’m still mad about it.
Especially considering how much time at school was an absolute waste.
