Why do teenagers sleep so much?

Question

I was hoping for medical answers here. There has to be a reason. I mean it cant be just cause they are growing because 3 and 4 year olds are growing at mega speeds and its impossible to get them down for a nap sometimes.

Answer 1

I learned in a parenting class from high school.. that babies require at least 18 hours of sleep, toddlers and young children require 10-12 hours of sleep teenagers also require 10-12 hours, adults require 6-8 hours and seniors require 9-11 hours.

Answer 2

Hormones and stress can cause us to be very tired.  Also, during the school year, I am so busy with after school activities and homework, I usually only get 4 or 5 hours of sleep.  Medically speaking, we need 8 to 9 hours a night, but most don't get that kind of sleep with everything else going on.  In the summer, I like to take advantage of the chance to get some sleep.  Don't say that we don't know what stress is either.  The things that we go through might not seem stressful to adults who are used to stress, but teenagers are new to the stress we have and don't know how to handle it.

Answer 3

Maybe it's cause we don't get enough sleep at night. I usually stay up alot~

Answer 4

OK its true that little kids grow really fast and they don't exactly want to take naps but don't you see them going to bed at 8 and waking up at 8 so they have all that sleep.......... but teenagers sleep a lot because we go to bed late because of school work and have a lot more to do then the average 4 year old and also we have to get up really early to go to school................ so we usually aren't getting the correct amount of sleep that we need during the night

Answer 5

Has to do with brain development, and the fact that so many teens stay up so late and have to drag their hind ends out of bed in the mornings for school.  They should be getting more sleep than what most get.  That goes for the rest of us as well.

Answer 6

Because they stay up till sometime 5:30 in the morning on the phone with somone or on the internet or watching tv. So they sleep in till 1 or 2 and then they cant sleep that night so they stay up again. Its just what a teenager does.

Answer 7

We're still growing, and we're always on the go doing this and doing that...and hence getting tired.

Answer 8

Teens go to sleep later because their internal clocks change with puberty. Their interntal clock delays the time that they begin to feel sleepy to about 11 pm or later. Most teens need 8.5 to 9 hours sleep to maintain proper daytime alertness. Many teens admit to only receiving 6.5 hours a sleep during the week. Then, when a teen has the time to catch up on sleep, (usually during the weekends) they will sleep longer, which further screws up the teens internal clock.

Teenagers are 'still' growing, and their busy lives i.e. homework, part time job, social life, family life, etc, cause them to become very tired. Particularly if these things are interfering with them getting 9 hours a sleep a night.

Often if a young child does not want to nap during the day, this could be because they don't want to feel like a 'little kid' anymore, they want to rebel against the rules, or it's actually because they actually aren't tired and don't want an afternoon nap because they don't need it. Day time naps are only necessary for toddlers who become cranky or tired during the day.

By the age of 5, if they are getting enough sleep at night, a daytime nap is no longer needed.

Answer 9

It's the same reason we need plenty of food fuel. We're growing more in just a few years than we ever have before. Our energy gets used up faster so we need to sleep more. During the summer, with no school to worry about, I get fourteen or fifteen hours of sleep every night.

Answer 10

Teenagers brains are changing rapidly, as are their bodies.  They actually need more sleep than younger kidshttp://www.sciencentral.com/articles/vie... has good information on this.

All the best.

Answer 11

to grow

Answer 12

We tend to stay up a lot later and need to sleep. I actually found out that I can operate on 2 hours of sleep only. But I don't recommend it. We need 8-9 hours of sleep a day. Just like babies need like 15 hours a day.

Answer 13

Because they're growing AND developing AND contending with learning adult rules and responsibilities AND contending with hormones and emotions.  3 and 4 year olds just get bigger.

As they say, you spend the first two years trying to teach them to walk and talk, and the next 16 trying to get them to sit down and be quiet!

Answer 14

From experience, I would say because we stay up very late. For ex., on tuesday, i didnt go to sleep til about 2 in the morning and i woke up at 1pm. So i guess we sleep so much to give our body some rest from working non stop all day.

Answer 15

According to the American Sleep Disorders Association, the average teenager needs around 9.5 hours of sleep per night, possibly because hormones that are critical to growth and sexual maturation are released mostly during slumber. Yet studies show that teenagers generally get an average of only 7.4 hours a night. This is far short of the desired quota for healthy teens. Find out how lack of sleep affects school here.

Researchers at Stanford University found in a study that teenagers require more sleep, by 1 to 2 hours, than do their younger 9- and 10-year-old siblings, who only require about 8 hours of sleep. This contradicts parents, since we tend to give later bed times and curfews to our children as they get older.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends keeping an eye out for signs of sleep deprivation:

difficulty waking in the morning

irritability in the afternoon

falling asleep during the day

oversleeping on the weekend

having difficulty remembering or concentrating

waking up often and having trouble going back to sleep

Sleep deprivation can be the cause behind extreme moodiness, poor performance in school and depression. Teens also have high risk of having car accidents because of falling asleep behind the wheel.

Here are a few suggestions to get your teen the sleep they need:

establish a reasonable bedtime and wake time, make this consistent throughout the week

establish a bedtime routine, taking a hot bath or quiet activity beforehand

cut down on caffine consumption

daily exercise, make sure this is at least 2 hours before bedtime

Answer 16

It's actually something to do with puberty and that our mind is expanding.

and we don't fall asleep so early because our "body" clock goes on what i call holiday and has a different timezone to you, and therefore we wake up later.

Lately i've been falling asleep after school and back in bed by 10!

I guess schools just stressing me out alot and it exhausts me

Answer 17

Well it depends on the school year/summertime

One day this week my dad counted how many hours I slept.

I slept 14 hours! haha wow!

Also because we tend to stay up later at night

when its the summer/weekends (as late as 1, 2, 3 AM) and than we wake up at a late time (such as 1, 2 or 3 PM)

At a sleepover, we also stayed up til 7 AM.

Answer 18

because we stay up like half the night and need to sleep in

Answer 19

That's just how the teenager's body works. Same reason why old people tend to move slower.