On average teenagers need 10 hours of sleep, but so many teens aren’t receiving that. Why? Reasons why teenagers don’t get enough sleep, and some are from school itself. Extra curricular activities and homework take up time at night and some students do not get home until 10:00 PM. Could teenagers benefit if school started later in the day? “People can focus and learn better if the school day started later probably,” says Elizabeth Wyatt. 

It takes about thirty minutes for the brain to fully wake up and getting up later would be helpful for students to have proper brain function. Students have different perspectives of the benefits of extra sleep. “We’d get more sleep, be more happy, and have a better working attitude,” says Avery Cline. Though that might be true, others believe the schedule should stay the same. “We’d get out later in the day so a lot of places schedules would have to change,” says Chloe Cannon. With the positives there are also downsides to starting later, we’d get out of school later as well. “We’d have less time in the evenings to be able to do stuff,” says Gavin Biddix. 

Some have suggested ending the day earlier. Classes can sometimes drag out with teachers not even having an idea for an assignment to last the rest of the class time, which causes most students to have nothing to do. “I have a lot of freetime in my classes with nothing to do, it gets boring pretty easily,” says Kylie Biddix. 

Whether we’re able to go to school later or not, it seems as if students would prefer to at least have a schedule change so they’d be able to focus better and get better sleep.