The majority of high schoolers are chronically sleep deprived, waking up early for school and tired from insufficient sleep. This leads to social and academic consequences as they struggle to keep up with all of their responsibilities while constantly exhausted.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, teenagers need between eight and ten hours of sleep per night, yet less than a quarter are regularly reaching this amount. A major cause of this is the natural shift in teens’ circadian rhythms, which encourage them to fall asleep later and wake up later. Many teens will only start feeling tired past 11 p.m. This means that in order to receive a healthy amount of sleep and be awake early the next morning for school, teens must go to bed earlier than their circadian rhythms expect. Many also find it difficult to go to bed earlier because schoolwork, extracurriculars and other responsibilities take up much of their time in the evenings.

Sleeping poorly is a very serious problem and is underaddressed in schools. Over long periods of time, a lack of good sleep can damage the circulatory system, nervous system and immune system. More immediately, exhaustion can cause trouble focusing in class and worse performance on tests. It can also cause emotional problems and contribute to worse mental health.

This is a big problem, but there are things we can do individually to get more sleep. It is recommended that teenagers go to bed at a consistent time, early enough to get a healthy amount of sleep, and stay off screens at night. Better sleep habits can help prevent exhaustion.

However, even as students improve their sleep individually, this problem may persist among teens on a wider scale. The underlying problems need to be addressed. Students need school schedules that work with, rather than against, their natural circadian rhythms and workloads that do not keep them up late at night studying.