At the onset of puberty, nearly all humans (and most mammals) experience a delay of sleep timing in the brain. Researchers around the world corroborated those findings. Researcher Mary Carskadon and others at Brown University found that the human brain has a marked shift in its sleep/wake pattern during adolescence. Research findings during the 1980s started to cast a new light on teenagers’ sleep patterns. In cities and large towns, high school students went first, followed by middle schoolers and then elementary students. As schools and districts grew in size in the late 1890s-1920s, staggered starting times became the norm across the country. In fact, as late as 1910, half of all children attended one-room schools. In the earliest days of American education, all students attended a single school with a single starting time.

This often gets into conflict with school schedules in many communities. Due to the biology of human development, the sleep mechanism in teens does not allow the brain to naturally awaken before about 8 a.m. is a matter of human biology, not a matter of attitude.Īt issue here are the sleep patterns of the teenage brain, which are different from those of younger children and adults. Research findings show that teens’ inability to get out of bed before 8 a.m. I have been researching the impact of later high school start times for 20 years.

Ideal wake up time