Why Teens Can't Sleep

Warren Zevon, American songwriter and musician, once said, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Ironically, sleep is one of the basic functions of life we need to survive. Teenagers take a good night’s sleep for granite, often skipping it for a variety of reasons. However, the body will never be at its peak performance without a good night’s rest. Due to other after school activities, responsibilities, or habits teenagers find themselves in circumstances where they are up late at night missing out on hours sleep. Some of these circumstances that cause sleep deprivation are out of a teen’s control, while others are not. When sports coaches schedule practices late in the evening this often means teens are not going to get a good night’s sleep. This situation is clearly out of a teen’s control as they must respect their coach’s decision. In the beginning of November, the Middletown Football team held a meeting to talk about our practice in preparation for the last game of the season. Because the last football game stretches two weeks into the winter sport season those playing a winter sport and football, such as myself, had to attend both of their practices. Coach Donahue, the football coach, arranged for me to attend wrestling at 2:30pm to 5:30pm then go to football practice 6pm to 8pm. I would not get home until 8:30pm. After eating dinner and finishing homework I was in bed by 11pm. It was then my responsibility to wake up at 5:30am to prepare for school and do it all over again. Having practice scheduled late in the evening deprived me of hours of sleep and it showed as I would find myself a sleep during my classes.
In addition to late sports practices, a teenager’s part-time job also can lead to sleep deprivation. Some teenagers rely on their job to help support their family or save to support themselves later in college. My best friend, Ylexis, has a part-time job at the Middletown Galleria AMC. She took this job because she needs the money for college. On a regular