The trick is to realize that it's not realistic for teens to go to bed earlier and to let them sleep in to a reasonable hour.
Teens are not easily calibrated machines that respond reliably to conditioning or rationally motivated behaviors. Their needs have nothing to do with the convenient fantasies of adults.
Teens need like 9 hours of sleep a night. Start letting kids sleep more. They need it way more than whatever they are being forced to give it up for by self-serving, broken institutions.
9 hours sleep, getting up at 6am for bus/commute plus early school start and yeah that means going to bed at 9pm. Good luck with enforcing that on any teen.
I find the obsession with homework in highschool to be totally ridiculous. It's beyond teaching or memorization, its moved to ceremonial busy work to make educators look good. Because obviously the volume of work kids are doing indicates how good the teacher is, right? It's a case of KPIs gone wrong for sure. When I went to university, my marks improved over HS because the daily BS was forgotten.
I have opposite feelings about it. I was always doing homeworks, but when I stopped doing math homeworks my grades dropped.
On the other side, when I stopped doing latin homeworks, my grades increased.
Then there was art homeworks which were entirely a joke, first time I did them regularly (replicate parthenon front with pencil and then ink it), my rating was 4 over 10 (notice that I was on a STEM course), which is extremely bad. And took me something like 8 hours to draw.
Next time I decided to do like everybody else and I used glass, a lamp and drawn with the picture under the paper.
Rating was 7 this time and it took me 2 hours of work (inking still takes time).
One student photocopied and enlarged the damn drawing and got 8 over 10 as a grade. Like, how are you supposed to get to 10?
The government can't really enforce bedtimes, but it can enforce this.
And as someone who has identified as a night owl my whole life I am thankful that future night owls may be less forced to accommodate the morning bird world we live in.
We're already telling them to go to bed earlier. However, they aren't rational because they are not yet adults. Therefore, an imperfect solution is better than the current situation.
I've seen this sort of template play out in many contexts, the most recent being fluoridated water ex: We shouldn't fluoridate water, even it if improves dental health because kids should stop ingesting sugar.
Fluoride and sugar operate completely independently on dental health. Fluoride is very beneficial, regardless of any other diet or dental hygiene factors. If you eat a lot of sugar, fluoride helps. If you don't eat any sugar, fluoride still helps.
I don't agree with putting fluoride in the water - but it should be available to anyone without a prescription.
Certainly not before forties. I'm almost forty, and it's still the same in this age group; myself included (just less frequently than in my 20's because I can't afford luxuries such as no-visible-consequences all-nighters anymore, I guess). ;)
I'm not sure how relevant that is. If someone is in their 20s, they're likely not going to find themselves in the situation of having to wake up early for highschool.
Circadian rhythms are different between people, and throughout one's life. They also typically vary by demographic.
Adolescents and young adults typically have a circadian rhythm shifted a couple of hours later than younger kids and adults. Even with the best of intentions about sleeping earlier, they're likely to be sleep-deprived by waking up earlier.
I also assume it varies with the season. For example it's half way through june, my body wants to naturally go to bed later and wake up earlier (11pm, 6am wake up time). I have to force myself to go at 9pm (have children), so that I get my 8 hours if sleep.
During winter when it's always dark I have no trouble going to bed at 8pm.
I'm a former night owl, used to go to bed between 4 and 6 am and wake up at 2pm every day of the week, which worked great to work for north america as a remote developer from europe
Ah, "just" thinking rears it's ugly head again, in the classic vein of over-generalizing from personal experience. "Just go to bed earlier." Why didn't anyone else think of that?
In fact they did. Unfortunately, when kids are loaded up with homework, that's not really possible. Late night, after homework, is often the only time they can socialize or do their own thing. Foregoing that would also be bad for mental health. And even when they do have the option of going to bed earlier (e.g. summer) that doesn't necessarily mean they sleep earlier. My daughter used to lie awake for hours trying to get to sleep; I've heard many similar stories from other parents and children. We don't need to offer facile quick fixes. We need to address the things that prevent good sleep by stressing them out and/or putting demands on their time, whether it's screens and social media or school-related stress.
If "just" going to bed earlier works for you, as it mostly has for me (less so since I hit my later 50s), then good for you. But don't act like it's The Answer for everyone.
The trick is to realize that it's not realistic for teens to go to bed earlier and to let them sleep in to a reasonable hour.
Teens are not easily calibrated machines that respond reliably to conditioning or rationally motivated behaviors. Their needs have nothing to do with the convenient fantasies of adults.
Teens need like 9 hours of sleep a night. Start letting kids sleep more. They need it way more than whatever they are being forced to give it up for by self-serving, broken institutions.