Benefits of Later School Start Times (Free Essay Example)
Do you want your teens to be in danger of a fatal car accident? School start time may be a controversial topic but it must be addressed. Many teens’ mental and physical health is negatively affected by early school start times and some are seriously injured or even killed. With all the negative effects of an early start time and the prospect of adding billions of dollars to the national economy, why haven’t we pushed school start times back already? A later start would improve GPAs around the United States as well as the mental health of millions of teenagers, it would also reduce the number of car accidents, improve the earning potentials of students, and improve the physical health of students.
Believe it or not, sleep deprivation can cause mental health issues like anxiety and depression as well as physical health issues such as obesity in teens. There has also been a connection discovered between sleep deprivation and the number of annual car accidents, some of which can be fatal. The number of car accidents in areas that have pushed back school start times is already declining. One school district had 23 crashes involving 16 to 18-year-olds but one year after the start time was pushed back, there were only 7. The AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) is urging middle and high schools to aim for “start times that allow students the opportunity to achieve optimal levels of sleep.” Some teens benefit from an early start time and some may even rely on the early start times for structure. But we shouldn’t allow those that are affected negatively by it to continue to suffer just because a few students are not significantly troubled by it. Besides, if the students aren’t affected by an early start time they shouldn’t be negatively affected by a later one.
A study showed as teens age, they naturally produce melatonin later than when they were younger causing a sleep schedule shift. The sleep schedule shift begins at the age of 10 and continues to shift 12 to 18 minutes every year. So, a ten-year-old that may easily fall asleep at 8, the same person at age 18 would have trouble sleeping any earlier than around 11 pm. Teens may also find it difficult to sleep because of blue light from electronics or caffeine but this can easily be fixed by avoiding caffeine and getting off electronic devices about an hour before bed. Either way, if students have to wake up before their bodies naturally do, they’ll feel drowsy throughout the day which will affect their academics because they won’t be as attentive. We should take natural biological shifts into consideration when deciding when teens will be sent to learn topics that may affect their futures.
Later school start times don’t just positively affect teens in the present, it also significantly improves their future earning potential which will improve their quality of life in the long run. There was a study that showed a correlation between later school start times and GPAs going up. A Seattle school boar study showed the average grade of the entire school district went to a B from a C+ after school start times were pushed back. This is good because, with higher GPAs, teens are more likely to get accepted into colleges or universities after high school and with a college degree, you are more likely to a higher paying job than you would without one.
Some say later school start times would be too expensive and wouldn’t be worth the initial cost of the shift. Although it would cost roughly $900 per student and schools would have to upgrade lighting systems to accommodate for after-school activities. This is a semi-valid argument but is completely annulled by the fact that approximately $8.6 billion dollars would be added to the national economy after only 2 years of having a lower school start times. So after only 10 years, $86 billion dollars would be added to the United States’ economy. This would definitely be worth the initial investment in the long run.
