The Association between Sleep Patterns, Educational Identity, and School Performance in Adolescents

Abstract

Adolescents’ school experience can be developmentally related to adolescents’ sleep. This study aimed to understand how sleep patterns (i.e., sleep duration and sleep-schedule) and weekend sleep-recovery strategies (i.e., social jetlag and weekend catch-up sleep) are associated with adolescents’ school experience (i.e., educational identity and school performance). Moreover, the differences in the school experiences between adolescents with different numbers of weekend-sleep-recovery strategies were assessed. For this purpose, 542 Italian adolescents (55.2% females, mean age 15.6 years) wore an actigraph for one week. After the actigraphic assessment, questionnaires on educational identity and school performance were administered. Results showed that short sleep-duration, later bedtime during weekdays and weekends, and a higher amount of social jetlag were negatively associated with school performance. Furthermore, adolescents who did not use any sleep-recovery strategy during the weekend presented lower levels of educational in-depth exploration compared to adolescents with higher levels of catch-up sleep but not social jetlag. These data pointed out a potentially detrimental role of social jetlag on school performance and differences in identity processes between adolescents who used and those who did not use sleep-recovery strategies, which could affect adolescents’ psychosocial adjustment.

Impacts of Blue Light Exposure From Electronic Devices on Circadian Rhythm and Sleep Disruption in Adolescent and Young Adult Students

“…Beyond academic marks, mood disorders, risk-taking behaviors, and drowsy-driving accidents increase with poor sleep [34]. Apart from behavioral effects, studies point to detrimental neurological and cognitive outcomes tied to chronic sleep restriction and irregular sleep patterns resulting from evening blue light exposure in adolescent students [35]. Magnetic resonance imaging scans have revealed reduced cortical thickness and volumes in frontal lobes essential to attention, memory, and complex processing after just a few nights of curtailed sleep [36].…”