With the COVID-19 pandemic, many people in the United States have been in quarantine for roughly 8 months, and many adolescents have been learning remotely as school campuses shut down. According to the Economic Policy Institute, “the virus consigned nearly all of over 55 million U.S. school children under the age of 18 to stay in their homes.”
The pandemic has disrupted the sleep patterns of adolescents. Studies indicate either an increase or decrease in the number of hours of restful sleep. An article by The New York Times viewed a study from the Journal of Sleep Research conducted in July where “1619 children in China….were sleeping longer at night than the children in 2018 and…sleeping less during the day; only 27.5 percent routinely took daytime naps, compared with 79.8 percent in 2018.” The article had also noted that “the caregivers in 2020 reported fewer sleep disturbances [in the children]. Daytime sleepiness, night wakings, bedtime resistance and sleep anxiety were all lower in the pandemic sample in the 2018 group.” From this, the researchers noticed they were getting “more sleep and more aligned sleep” than they did when they were attending school.
This was similar to the information found on sleep patterns among older adolescents. A study done this year in Canada with phone interviews from 45 adolescents found that the typical adolescent surveyed slept two hours more, experienced greater sleep quality, and felt less sleepy during the day compared to pre-pandemic times. The results determined that “55% of the participants described being sleepy during the school day before the pandemic and attributed this to their need to wake up early to get to school and to get less sleep. 78% reported that under the pandemic shutdown they were not sleepy and they attributed this primarily to getting more sleep.” Not only was this due to the lack of commute time, but they also felt “lower school-related stress.”
There are sources, however, that assert that children have lost sleep during the pandemic. According to an article from John Hopkins, “some children are no longer on a sleep schedule” because “they go to bed and wake up at various times, creating difficulties falling [a]sleep, waking in the morning and sometimes difficulty sleeping during the night.” As a result, the article states, “kids feel sluggish during the day and may take a nap, making it hard to fall asleep the next night.”
Whether children have worse or better sleep schedules, the fact of the matter is that the pandemic has entirely changed many adolescents’ schedules. With the pandemic making students have more irregular schedules, their sleep patterns have changed, and it is unknown how this will affect them in the future.
References
Gruber, Reut, et al. “The Impact of COVID-19 Related School Shutdown on Sleep in Adolescents: a Natural Experiment.” Sleep Medicine, Elsevier, 22 Sept. 2020, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389945720304184?via=ihub.
Klass, Perri. “How Children's Sleep Habits Have Changed in the Pandemic.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Aug. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/well/family/children-sleep-pandemic.html.
“Newsroom.” Is the Pandemic Having an Impact on the Way Children Sleep? - Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, www.hopkinsallchildrens.org/ACH-News/General-News/Is-the-Pandemic-Having-an-Impact-on-the-Way-Childr.
Report • By Emma García and Elaine Weiss • September 10. “COVID-19 and Student Performance, Equity, and U.S. Education Policy: Lessons from Pre-Pandemic Research to Inform Relief, Recovery, and Rebuilding.” Economic Policy Institute, www.epi.org/publication/the-consequences-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-for-education-performance-and-equity-in-the-united-states-what-can-we-learn-from-pre-pandemic-research-to-inform-relief-recovery-and-rebuilding/.
Written by Keya Mann
Edited by Lucy Ge
Graphics by Karis Kelly
Group advised by Sadia Akbar