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.”
High school teacher here. Obviously, I don’t speak for everyone, but many of us wish school would start at a more reasonable time for students. We don’t enjoy trying to teach first (and second, and third) period classes where many students are either absent or asleep. And of course, we care about the students and know it would be much healthier for them to sleep in. School can start around 10:00, thanks. But, as others have pointed out, the schedule is not dictated by what is best for the students.
Edit: some of the students in the schools I work at have to get up around 5:00. The often wait for 30+ minutes for buses to come (but that is a “the district doesn’t care about the students” issue, not a start time issue).
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.
7pm if you take an hour lunch, 6pm if you don’t take a lunch.
I’ve worked a 10-7 shift before. Some people hated it, but I actually loved it. I got to stay up every night to a reasonable 12-1, okay videogames with friends, slept until a nice morning, woke up and drove to work. It was by far the best work shift time I’ve ever had. It also helped that I lived 3 minutes away, so I would literally wake up at like 9, sss, then drive to work. Saved so much gas at that job hahaha. I’d fill up my Corolla like once a month as long as I didn’t visit friends too much. And I was in an apartment with underground parking, so the uv damage to my car was like nothing.
The only downside is you don’t get to do errands during the week. Which… If you plan very very well isn’t an issue, but more often than not was an issue.
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.
Just dodge bro.
Skill issue
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.
There’s tired, and then there’s sleepy. For me, if I’m not sleepy, there’s about a 5% chance I will be able to fall asleep upon going to bed. I remember plenty of nights in high school going to bed “early” around 10pm, and sure enough I’m still awake at 2am. So first off there’s ability to sleep when needed.
Second, the modern perspective contains a lot of blue light in daily lives that prevents melatonin secretion. Few kids have the self control and presence of mind to properly regulate their screen time at night, even if just from TV, not to mention phones.
Realistically just with the second point, the cards are stacked against them.
The parents and their sleep hygiene play a huge role in this. My parents always went to bed around 22h30 and I had my bedtime routine as well. Sleep hygiene was taught to me from a very young age. Turn off screens, brush my teeth, go into bed, read a bit or play with my plush animals. I always slept within minutes.
Structure and consistency is so important to a healthy sleep schedule. Now I can sleep at any time virtually anywhere. It’s awesome
Now I can sleep at any time virtually anywhere.
just to chime in, I have the polar opposite of your experience and still can zonk out in 5 mins any time I like. The only consistent thing is that I get a minimum of 6 hours of sleep a night, but my smartwatch still gives me sleep ratings in the high 80s and low 90s almost every night. No idea if this is in any way scientific but people on Reddit seem to value it.
I also am registered as having the stress of a puddle, similarly.
For most people, I think it is more to do with genetics rather than any real habits. I think all you really need to do is make your bedroom completely dark and slightly cold, and exercise a couple of times a week.
You are supposed to go to sleep early. Then you will get your 8 hours of sleep. For some time I had to wake up as early as 4:30. As I had to drive my car to get to work, staying up late was just unthinkable to me.
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.
The way I see it, you’re probably freest from the ages one to four Around the age of five you’re shipped away for your body to be stored They promise education, but really they give you tests and scores And they predictin’ prison population by who scoring the lowest
So much of the education system is centered on child abuse and grooming children to accept abuse as adults
Also it’s affordable daycare for kids so parents can work.
That’s the real reason it starts early: so two working parents can get the kids out the door and then still have time to get to work themselves
So it’s a cycle of abuse then
I’d describe it more as systemic.
https://genius.com/Run-the-jewels-walking-in-the-snow-lyrics
Knew I’d heard this somewhere. RTJ is just 💋 🤌
Many African American slaves did not know they were slaves until about age 6, because they were not given work when too young to be useful. Sounds familiar…
Going to school is not comparable to literal slavery
What happens if you just don’t go?
Being the literal property of another human being is not the same as a mandatory education. Also before you ask having to listen to your parents as a kid also is not comparable to slavery.
But to answer your question the parents get in trouble for it
Of course definitely not the same in terms of violence, but in terms of our inability to have a choice. Slavery is different and “worse” but somehow it rhymes.
I’m stunned by the absolute ignorance of this comment.
Please stay in school kids or somehow you’ll wind up thinking slavery is comparable to school.
I don’t have the energy to full educate you on the horrors of slavery. But I can assure you having to go to school, recieve a free education, and fill in a scantron every now and again is not comparable in the slightest.
Sure that part is great. The part that’s not is the compulsory part that is in hours conducive only to corporations’ benefit and not children. Also the religious garbage spewed in many states. The inequal funding, the terrible teacher’s pay and conditions. High school sports as an industry. Lack of any flexibility for children’s needs. Long hours at too young and age. It’s not bad overall but there are very, very shitty parts of it in dire need of improvement. I’m sure we agree overall anyways.
My mental health radically improved my senior year when I was ahead on credits and could skip the first block of classes each morning.
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.
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.
I left school around 9th grade, did “homeschool” which amounted to basically just watching documentaries and smoking weed and now I’m one of the highest earners out of everyone I originally went to school with. From being that weird poor kid who always got bullied to being quite comfortable- life is fuckin’ weird.
to be fair i learned more in life from weed and documentaries than i ever did from actual school. you are justified in doing great.
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.
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.
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)
You can’t cause delinquency if you’re too busy getting 8 hours of sleep.
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 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 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.
We’ve known this for decades, but almost no districts will make the changes necessary. The youngest grades (K-4 or 5) should be the first schools to start in the morning, and the HS the last.
What happens when that is suggested is people balk at either sports programs needing to be cut or the argument that the older siblings need to be out of school to babysit the younger siblings.
Yep, exactly.
Almost 30 years now we’ve known that shifting around the school schedule by roughly a max of 2 hours would result in significantly improved learning across the board, for basically 0 cost… and we don’t do it.
America is a scam.
School is conditioning for work. They need you sleep-deprived because if you have any extra energy you might use it to analyze your situation and attempt to improve it.
well modern public schools are basically glorified daycares.
awful start time policies being the norm never changes despite the massive mountain of evidence it should because parents typically need to go into work in the morning. society collectively decided shafting kids’ sleep schedules by starting school before the already absurdly early 9-5 was the best we could do on that compromise.
and to an extent, that’s true, because we’d have to reform a lot more than just schools to effectively implement this change. there just isn’t the will in the public sphere to push this.
In my 30s and I’m still mad about it.
Especially considering how much time at school was an absolute waste.
