Introduction
Sleep is a basic necessity for every person because the entire organism receives the required rest while an individual is sleeping. However, not all people understand this fact, which results in the deprivation of sleep, and this issue is typical among adolescents. Objective and subjective reasons can result in the emergence of the problem. For teenagers, computer games and social media are among the leading factors that make these people stay awake till late at night. Consequently, adolescents often have difficulties waking up and feel bad in the mornings. These individuals and their parents do not understand that this seemingly harmless behavior can lead to essential adverse outcomes. Scientific evidence demonstrates that sleep deprivation can negatively affect high school students’ cognitive and learning abilities, which leads to poor academic achievements.
Effects of Sleep Deprivation
To begin with, one should highlight that sufficient sleep is a positive phenomenon. According to Galván, this behavior fosters the normal and fully-fledged evolvement of the brain and its functions during adolescence (82). Since this period witnesses the development of mental health basics that will be essential for the entire life, individuals should draw significant attention to the given issue. However, many high school students still ignore this importance, and sleep deprivation leads to cognitive, emotional, and learning issues (Galván 86). This finding reveals that insufficient time in bed provides young individuals with many problems. It becomes challenging for students to control their emotions and engage in mental activity. These are the skills and abilities that can help young individuals succeed in the learning environment. That is why it is not surprising that the final outcome in this scenario leads to more mediocre academic achievement.
In addition to that, one should admit that sleep deprivation impacts high school students in particular ways. A scientific article comments on the connection between insufficient sleep time and reduced attention span (Kansagra S205). This finding reveals that it becomes more difficult for adolescents to stay focused on a single task or activity. Since their concentration is lower, they are more likely to make mistakes while completing some assignments. It is also possible to suggest that people’s memory suffers since reduced attention makes memorizing troublesome. That is why Kansagra concludes that high school students’ cognitive performance is impaired, which negatively influences their academic achievement (S205). This information evidently describes a connection between sleep deprivation and learning outcomes because it is challenging to succeed when memory and attention performance is compromised.
While the findings above have commented on objective consequences, it is also necessary to consider subjective ones. As a rule, high school students do not feel or understand that their cognitive abilities are impaired. These people do not link poor academic results with staying awake till night. However, adolescents can notice the impact of the selected behavior on their subjective well-being. One should admit that sleep deprivation leads to feeling sleepy and tired (Toyong 54). These conditions often result in the fact that high school students do not have sufficient motivation to engage in the learning process actively. Simultaneously, these individuals can rely on their physical and emotional tiredness to justify their non-involvement in completing homework assignments. Under such conditions, there is no doubt that teenagers do not have sufficient energy and motivation to focus on achieving positive outcomes in the learning sphere.
As has already been mentioned, high school students have a few reasons for staying awake till late at night. There can be some objective factors that lead to individual sleep deprivation cases, but surfing the Internet and playing computer or mobile games are more typical and systematic. This scenario is prevalent during weekdays, meaning that adolescents go to bed late and experience difficulties waking up in the morning. Some of these people believe that sleeping more hours during weekends is a way to compensate for this problem. This approach is also known as a sleep bank strategy, implying that people require extra hours of sleep to prepare for a sleep deprivation period. It is now necessary to consider whether this way can minimize the negative impacts of inefficient sleep on academic achievement.
Many experts admit the issue that there exists weekday-to-weekend sleep discrepancy among teenagers. The study by Sun et al. is among them, and the scholars admit that this approach is not productive (27). The rationale behind this statement is that extra hours of sleep during weekends cannot cover sleep deficiency that is earned during weekdays. Sun et al. have found that those high school students that followed this approach had more mediocre academic performance and suffered from depressive symptoms (27). The rationale behind these findings can refer to the fact that negative effects of the lack of sleep are accumulated during weekdays, and weekends offer insufficient time to recover from them. That is why it is evident that various manifestations of sleep deprivation adversely affect high school students’ academic achievement.
Potential Response
Since numerous experts present sufficient evidence to claim that sleep deprivation adversely affects high school students’ learning performance, it is reasonable to comment on how the issue can be addressed. An evident answer implies that children should go to bed earlier. However, parents’ active involvement is required to implement this intervention, but not all adults will contribute because not all of them understand the importance of this issue. That is why it is necessary to implement an improvement at the system level. The article by Dunster et al. meets this requirement and comments on the effects of a delayed school start time (1). These scholars identified that a decision to start school class one hour later led to increased sleep duration and almost 5% better grades among high school students (Dunster et al. 1). Consequently, this decision can be an effective intervention to minimize the adverse consequences of sleep deprivation among adolescents.
Conclusion
The essay has gathered and discussed many negative effects of sleep deprivation on high school students’ academic achievement. According to scientific evidence from scholarly and peer-reviewed sources, the issue is a barrier to the brain’s normal development during adolescence. As a result, teenagers suffer from reduced attention span, memory, and concentration. The issue also makes these individuals feel sleepy and tired during the day, which leads to a decreased motivation to engage in learning activities. Literature findings also demonstrate that the decision to sleep more hours during weekends is not sufficient to minimize the negative impact of these factors. That is why a specific intervention should be implemented to address the situation, and modifying school start times is a suitable option. If schools begin one hour later, students have more time to sleep, and their academic performance is expected to improve.
Works Cited
Dunster, Gideon P., et al. “Sleepmore in Seattle: Later School Start Times Are Associated with More Sleep and Better Performance in High School Students.” Science Advances, vol. 4, no. 12, 2018, pp. 1-7.
Galván, Adriana. “The Need for Sleep in the Adolescent Brain.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 24, no. 1, 2020, pp. 79-89.
Kansagra, Sujay. “Sleep Disorders in Adolescents.” Pediatrics, vol. 145, no. Supplement 2, 2020, pp. S204-S209.
Sun, Wanqi, et al. “Associations of Weekday-to-Weekend sleep differences with Academic Performance and Health-Related Outcomes in School-Age Children and Youths.” Sleep Medicine Reviews, vol. 46, 2019, pp. 27-53.
Toyong, Paul Junrey A. “Sleeping Habits, Classroom Behavior, and Academic Performance of Senior High School Students.” International Journal of Multidisciplinary: Applied Business and Education Research, vol. 1, no. 1, 2020, pp. 54-63.