Teens who sleep for less than seven hours per day are less likely to succeed academically compared to those who enjoy a good night's sleep, a new study has found.
Researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden found that sleep disturbance and habitual short sleep duration (less than seven hours per day) increased the risk of failure in school.
The study led by researcher Christian Benedict and doctoral student Olga Titova at the Department of Neuroscience involved more than 20,000 adolescents aged between 12 and 19 from Uppsala County.
The results suggest that sleep may play an important role for adolescents' performance at school, researchers said.
"Another important finding of our study is that around 30 per cent of the adolescents reported regular sleep problems. Similar observations have been made in other adolescent cohorts, indicating that sleep problems among adolescents have reached an epidemic level in our modern societies," said Benedict.
The study is published in the journal Sleep Medicine.
