Researchers are calling it the Great Sleep Recession: Over the past 20 years teens have been getting less sleep and it doesn't seem to be getting better. NY1's Erin Billups filed the following report.

A study out in the Pediatrics Journal found that during the 90s the number of teens getting a full night's rest dropped rapidly. And while that trend has since plateaued, a majority of American teens still fail to get the recommended nine hours of nightly sleep.

"After age 15, we've documented in the last 15 years, it's less than 50 percent of adolescents who are getting even seven or more hours of sleep on a regular basis and by age 17, it's 30 percent. So you know, there's not much more room for it to go down I think," says Columbia Mailman's School of Public Health Epidemiology Assistant Professor and Lead Study Author Katherine Keyes.

 

From a national survey of more than 270,000 teenagers Keyes found that girls were less likely to get adequate sleep compared with boys as were blacks, Hispanics, students living in urban environments and those from poorer backgrounds.

"Especially kids in low socioeconomic households, there might be larger households, there might be more room sharing, there might be more noise, more urban environments and all of these could contribute to sleep problems," says Keyes.

But those from low socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to report that they thought they were getting enough sleep.

"One of the take home messages from our study I think is health literacy. You know that teens need to understand how much sleep is an adequate amount of sleep and that these health literacy messages are not being applied universally," says Keyes.

She says there needs to be more conversations with teenagers spelling out how sleepless nights impact their health and development.

"We know that even one night of disrupted sleep causes problems in adolescents’ ability to concentrate, focus. This has implications for driver safety. This has implications for a lot of public health problems that we see in adolescent health," says Keyes, noting it includes a strong link between adulthood obesity and adolescent sleep deprivation.

On top of delaying school start times Keyes says one thing teens should think about, is maintaining a strict night time routine through the weekend.