Sleep Difference between Adolescents and Young Adults

Background: Sleep is important for maintaining overall physical and mental health. Adolescents and young adults (AYAs) at growing age need more sleep because it acts as the fuel for rapidly growing brain and bodies. Many physicians encounter young people having health issue developed due to improper sleep. Understanding the connection between sleep and health in AYAs is important as the sleep problem is coming up as a global pandemic that can seriously harm the health, safety, productivity of our nation’s young generation, thus, is a major public health concern.

Aim: The current study investigates the sleep behavior (such as sleep onset, sleep offset, sleep latency, sleep inertia, actual sleep) of adolescents in comparison to young adults.

Methods: Present study is based on self-reported sleep-log entries made by subjects. The collection of data is done on a random basis from school and university set up. Sleep log sheet is an instrument that elicits sleep-related data (sleep onset/offset, latency/inertia, etc.) on a day-to-day basis. Statistical analysis was done using the Mann-Whitney U test at a significance level of p < 0.005.

Results: To conduct this study, individuals of two different age groups were selected; adolescent group (age = 14±01 year; n = 564) and young adult (age = 23±01 year; n = 43). The study shows a significant difference between adolescents and young adult’s timings for various sleep variables such as time to bed (p<0.0001), sleep onset (p<0.0001), sleep offset (p<0.0001), sleep inertia (p= 0.0156). Although, no significant difference was reported in actual sleep duration and sleep latency between the groups.

Conclusion: Outcomes of the study are indicative of sleep deprivation in adolescent students. This information can help us to further understand the sleep-related differences in the behavior of adolescent and young adults. This can aid in devise a better work schedule to optimize their performance.