It’s 6 a.m. and you roll out of bed. The sky is still dark and your phone alarm is blaring. It’s time to get up and prepare for school.

You drag your feet as you make your way to the bathroom. Your eyes burn as you turn on the light and stare at your reflection in the mirror, your shoulders slumped forward.

In somnolent daze, you wish you’d gotten more sleep.  

On any school day, almost all teenagers are falling out of bed and stumbling out of the house. The majority of American teens wake between 6 and 6:30 a.m., and by the time they start their first class, they’ve been awake an hour or less.

This means that the students arriving at school between 7-7:30 a.m. are literally half-asleep. The reason that these students are half-asleep is due to sleep deprivation.

Sleep deprivation is a lot more common than one might think. 

Biology and human development dictates that the sleep mechanism in teens, or their Circadian Rhythms, prevents teens from going to bed early and does not allow the brain to fully awaken until 8 a.m. 

The sleep mechanism is what makes a person tired. It creates Melatonin that helps a person fall asleep and stay asleep. However, teens’ brain do not produce Melatonin until later at night, if they are only running on the six out of the 10 recommended hours that they would normally need, teens are deprived of sleep.

The National Sleep Foundation found that only 15 percent of students reported sleeping eight to 12 hours on school nights.

“I mean, at this point, I’ve gotten used to late nights because I’m guilty of procrastinating, but I would always find myself zoning out during class,” freshman Emily Polsin said.

Sleep deprivation affects many teenagers. This causes them to be unfocused in school and potentially even after they’ve left school. With all of the homework, and students typically procrastinating and waiting the night before a paper is due to finish it, it’s no wonder why students are sleeping in the middle of class.

Sleep deprivation also creates health hazards. People who do not get enough sleep are more susceptible to mental illness and weight gain. Additionally, teens driving to school half-asleep present another life-threatening danger.

Once students get home from school, all they can think about is wanting to crawl back into bed and sleep. However, before any of that, homework must be done. 

The amount of homework given to students continuously doesn’t leave them with enough time to get the proper amount of sleep that they should.

And the sleepless cycles continue.

This leaves students without enough energy to stay awake or on-task during school. Unless high schools push back start times, something that many schools are reluctant to do, even in though the science suggests otherwise, sleep deprivation in teens can’t be fixed completely.

Until them it’s up at 6 a.m. and roll at bed. Rinse and repeat.