Your teenager lives under a lot of stress, he has school and homework, sports and friends, television and Internet and above all the tension to get ahead in life. He hardly has time for sleep. These youngsters give their normal nine-hour sleep a go by. William C. Dement, world's leading authority on sleep and related disorders says millions of young people are putting their health and education at risk by not making sleep a higher priority in their daily routine.
Insufficient sleep can result in mental and physical health and even premature aging.
The human biological clock has been so programmed that each person feels sleepy during nighttime and remains active during the daylight hours. So teenagers who literally burn midnight oil and try to make good the loss during the day are constantly at war with their biological clocks. Our bodies experience two natural periods of sleepiness during the 24-hour day, regardless of the amount of sleep we've had in the previous 24 hours. A second period of sleepiness is in the afternoon, between about 1300 and 1500 hrs. This means that we are more susceptible to fall asleep at these times.