Essay On Sleeping Patterns

3077 Words13 Pages
Sleep is an essential part to the growth and wellbeing of humans. Without it we will not fully develop or function properly. As high school students we tend to over exert ourselves and not get the adequate amount of sleep needed to function and develop properly. This will then affect everything we do in the days to follow and will therefore affect our academic and sporting abilities as well as our moods and overall functioning. The intent of this research project was to identify what affects the sleeping patterns in senior school pupils at Kingswood College. An educated guess would be to say that students that have bad sleeping environments, active brains and bodies before sleeping, sleep debt, and suffer from either depression, asthma, allergic…show more content…
Teenagers’ sleeping patterns are affected by many different things. As puberty starts in the early teen years a teenager’s body clock changes due to hormonal shifts and changes. They acquire something known as “sleep debt” due to waking up early for school and going to sleep late due to several things. Sleep debt is the amount of sleep a person’s body still needs after a night’s sleep. Your body keeps track of the sleep that it did not get and this all accumulates to form a “sleep debt”. Teenagers generally have a busy schedule after school. They do homework, sport, extracurricular activities, part-time jobs, and have social commitments. These will affect the amount and quality of sleep a teenager gets. Teenagers spend their free time watching TV and using phones and computers. These things all cut back the total hours of sleep they get each night. Not getting enough sleep will cause a teenager’s brain to become more active. An over-stimulated brain is less able to fall asleep. Teenagers that don’t receive enough sleep are likely to suffer from the following: concentration difficulties, “day-dreaming” in class, memory impairment, lack of enthusiasm, shortened attention span poor decision making, moodiness and aggression, depression, risk-taking behaviour, slower physical reflexes, clumsiness, reduced sporting performance, reduced academic performance, and absence from activities.
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