Lewis became interested in the topic of sleep deprivation in teens when her oldest son started high school in 2015 and the school start time was 7:30 am. To her, that was shockingly early and it was the earliest her children ever had to go to school. “I was quickly noticing that this was far from ideal. We’d get in the car at 7:10 am…he was hardly what I would characterize as alert and ready for a full day at school.” As a concerned parent, she became a part of the group that helped get a law on school start times passed in California. “…our new law in California just went into effect on July 1st and it is the first law of its kind in the entire country. We are the first state to enact a law that sets any sort’ve mandate on how early is too early for middle and high school to start the day.”
According to Lewis, one of the reasons teens don’t get enough sleep is that they are so overloaded with activities. “…you have teens who have a full day of classes, but many or sometimes even all of those classes are advanced level, meaning heavier homework loads. Plus they’re in involved in sports or other extracurriculars…they’re doing this because they feel like they have to in order to be successful…the bar just keeps going higher and higher but it really is…cutting into their sleep time…and of course also exacerbating mental health issues.”
As a writer, you write your article, you put it out in the world, and then you never know what kind of impact it’s going to have. You hope it will be read and people will connect with it, but I could not have possibly foreseen how this particular op-ed, what was going to happen as a result.
Sleep – something every living creature does and needs to survive.
Teens are the leaders of tomorrow and they need to have the best society that we can give them, physically and mentally, to prepare them for the future – theirs and ours and the world.
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