Late Starts: Even Sweeter than Ice Cream
Writer: Swanee DouglasPicture your news feed on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. If it looks anything like mine, every few scrolls late at night brings forth photos of new, trendy ice cream shops in Toronto. Be it evaporating liquid nitrogen or cotton candy the size of babies’ heads, ice cream in Toronto continues to set the bar higher with each new shop.
While it is amusing to watch the different trendy dessert venues in Toronto go viral on social media, it seems that the time stamps for these and other social activities are getting later and later. Even during the school year, Snapchats at 2 am during the “moratorium” have become commonplace. How is this affecting us? Do most Havergal students get the eight to ten hours of sleep each night recommended by the National Sleep Foundation? Could a trip to eat ice cream be healthier than the constant stream of late night social media posts about these sweet treats?
Oftentimes, we are so busy with school and extracurriculars that there never seems to be enough time to sleep. Victoria Siu, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, examines the cost of sleep deprivation in a recent article in the medical journal Synapse. She traces the early sleep deprivation studies of the 1960s up to the current day. While we are still in the process of understanding the purpose of sleep, the overwhelming consensus is that there is a strong link between sleep, memory consolidation, and overall wellness. Public Health Specialist Rebecca Huxta challenges the popular idea among students that sleep is a “waste of time” when they need to study. Specifically, Huxta states “memories are created by sleeping, dreaming, and going through sleep cycles. And students don’t realize they need sleep for memory retention, so they’ll often stay up all night studying and can’t retain any of that information.”
Are homework and late night scrolling through social media the only reasons teens aren’t getting enough sleep? It seems as though ice cream on social media is not the only culprit. Research shows that biological sleep patterns naturally lean to going to bed later and waking up later during adolescence. A recent study published in Oxford University Press’ SLEEP journal describes how a Singapore all-girls high school pushed back its start time by forty-five minutes without pushing back its end time. The study found that even in Singaporean society--where the importance of academic success is highly valued and trading sleep for academics is common--the later start times resulted in the girls getting more sleep and feeling better.
Victoria Siu outlines a number of initiatives to promote both the quantity and quality of sleep for students. Simple lifestyle tips include using Night Shift mode on iPhones or red-light apps for others when it is time for bed. The blue light from screens tricks the brain’s circadian rhythm into thinking it is still daytime. As well, we should avoid exercise for at least four hours before sleeping as it takes that much time for our body temperature to drop to a level optimal for sleep. While sleeping only six to seven hours a night might let us squeeze in extra studying, Snapchats, or Netflix, perhaps, in the end, it is not worth it.
Havergal has seen the effects of students not getting enough sleep. According to Dr. Simmonds, “That's why Havergal implemented a pilot program in 2017/18 that had Upper School students experience a delayed start one Wednesday per month. The feedback we received from students and faculty on this pilot initiative was overwhelmingly positive and helped the school make its decision to revise the Upper School schedule for 2018/19.” Havergal’s decision to implement its own “late start Wednesdays” program this year supports the culture of improved sleep and overall wellness. While the days of social media, late night posts, and long lineups for ice cream are probably here to stay, I think it will be easy to get used to late start Wednesdays.
Photo Ainsley Robertson