Earlier Bedtime and Its Effect on Adolescent Sleep Duration

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Sleep duration decreases by similar to 10 minutes per year throughout adolescence. A circadian phase delay and changes in homeostatic sleep regulation enable adolescents to stay up later. We determine if teens are able to increase sleep duration by advancing bedtime and whether this ability changes with age. METHODS: A younger cohort of 77 participants ranging in age from 9.9 to 16.2 years were studied annually for 3 years. An older cohort of 67 participants ranging in age from 15.0 to 20.6 years was studied only once. Annually, participants kept each of 3 different time in bed (TIB) schedules (7, 8.5, and 10 hours) for 4 consecutive nights. Participants kept their habitual weekday rise times; TIB was altered by advancing bedtimes. We report polysomnography-measured sleep durations from the fourth night of the TIB schedule. RESULTS: Despite increases in sleep onset latency and wake after sleep onset, sleep duration increased with TIB as bedtime was advanced. Average (SE) sleep duration increased from 402.8 (1.6) minutes with 7 hours to 470.6 (2.1) minutes with 8.5 hours to 527.5 (3.0) minutes with 10 hours TIB. Sleep duration decreased with age (1.55 [0.48] minutes/year), but the TIB effect on sleep duration did not (TIB by age interaction, P = .42). CONCLUSIONS: Adolescents can substantially increase sleep duration by advancing bedtime, and this ability does not change between ages 10 and 21 years. Additional research is needed to determine how to translate these findings from experiment-controlled sleep schedules to real-world sleep duration increases.