High school students’ bed and wake-up times have been delayed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have become more active during the evening, according to study results published in Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
“During the pandemic, adolescents have had more flexibility with their schedule, which should help align with their sleep preferences,” Felipe Dias Genta, of the Rudolf Steiner Waldorf School in Brazil, and colleagues wrote. “Online classes begin later than the usual in-person classes and there is no time spent commuting to school. The impact of the pandemic on sleep habits and quality of sleep and quality of life among adolescents has not been adequately characterized and compared with the period previous to the pandemic in the same group of students.”The researchers hypothesized that the COVID-19 pandemic shifted adolescents’ daily rhythm toward the evening, as well as negatively affected high school students’ sleep quality and quality of life. They tested these hypotheses by analyzing newly collected data from 94 high school students (64% girls; aged 15 ± 1 years) who had been participating in an ongoing study of sleep quality and quality of life prior to the pandemic, allowing them to assess the same cohort before and during the pandemic. Participants answered questions regarding their usual bed and wake-up times, and they completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index Questionnaire, the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, the Horne-Osteberg Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire and the WHO Quality of Life Questionnaire-abbreviated version prior to and during the pandemic.