To learn more about the effects of sleep patterns on teens, Oxford University Press spoke to Tori Van Dyk, PhD, author of “Feasibility and Emotional Impact of Experimentally Extending Sleep in Short-Sleeping Adolescents.”
In the case of teen sleep, prior experimental approaches have been limited to the summer months or have been conducted in laboratory settings. With unique schedules, social interactions, and stressors, the life of a teen may be very different outside of the lab or during the school year. We didn’t want to restrict sleep during the school year, because that could do harm (for example, poor classroom learning or poor test scores).
