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Comment by sersi | Hacker News Reader

I remember waking up to go to school every morning at 6:45 and taking the bus every day at 7:05 when I was in high school in France. Most months the sun hadn't even risen yet. It was punishing, and I definitely was sleep deprived by the end of the week.

Because of the schedule, my parents had me go to sleep around 9pm but I had a hard time sleeping then and tended to not fall asleep before midnight/1 am. I'd either lie in bed thinking, or use my radio alarm clock light to read books. Honestly, I think I would have been healthier and enjoyed school a lot more if school had started 90 minutes later.

That's definitely a criteria I'd look out for when choosing a school for my son.

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I was the same as a kid - I really struggled with the early mornings, and could never sleep before midnight. Come the weekend, and I was so tired I'd sleep until midday.

When I first started at high school, I was a great student, for example winning multiple prizes over the first 18 months. But the tiredness really took a toll, and for most of the rest of school I was a half zombie - I still did well at school, but I'm sure I could have achieved so much more if I wasn't so incredibly tired all the time, and it for sure took a toll on my social life too.

Us two were maybe more extreme examples, but it seems to be a common problem.

I don't know what the solution is though?

Just start school later in the day. That's the solution. The real problem is that the rest of society wants to start at set times. People don't want their kids "home alone" after they've left for work or before they come home from work. All of society just isn't geared toward flexibility for its constituents.

Agreed. I know a lot of it is busing - they have to bus elementary kids then the MS/HS kids. But it should be switched at least. Young kids get up early, older kids don't.

Regardless, school in general should start later, and so should businesses. If I'm left to my own devices without external factors, I will go to sleep at 2am and get up at 10am. And that's what I did during the lockdowns. But otherwise, its punishing when I have to get up at 7am to be at work at 8 or 9.

If you were so tired, why couldn't you just sleep earlier at night? If I'm remembering my own teen years correctly, most of us chose to stay up late not because we couldn't sleep, but because we just wanted to, sleep be damned.

Everyone complains about having to get up early, but the sleep deprivation is self inflicted. If you're tired, you can sleep at 9pm.

This isn’t how bodies or sleep work in the general case.

Don't take this personally (I really do mean it) but I think this attitude is part of the problem. My best, most alert hours are after ten pm. I can't just will those away, and I've tried. There is enormous social stigma around being a late riser. We're characterized as having low self control or accused of laziness. Perhaps that's deserved in some cases, but morning people can be those things too. I can go to bed at six pm and I'll guarantee you I'll still be a wreck at six am.

Night owls work well in the evening. Even if some of them can force themselves to operate early, is it reasonable to expect them to sacrifice their best hours?

Rant over, it's early for me after all :)

> We're characterized as having low self control or accused of laziness.

Yep, I remember my Dad telling me I was lazy - it seemed really unfair, as there was nothing I could do about it.

Two reasons, chiefly.

Every body is governed by circadian rhythm. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to be, but the majority tends to overrule the minority in this great experiment we call modern society. Unfortunately, the "majority" are not developing children, but adults in authority who are less affected by disruptions to their sleep and don't have to prioritize the health and wellbeing of their charges and so don't.

The second reason is more artificial. In the US, homework is given without any consideration for work or life schedules, let alone what other classes are assigning. I went to a "school of excellence" where I took eight classes each day, five days a week, and they all assigned roughly an hour's worth of homework each night. I had no time to work and barely any time to participate in extracurriculars without staying up each night until 11pm. Because I lived in a different city, I generally had to leave by 5:45am to make my zero period.

Can you tell me what my younger self could have done differently so they were able to be asleep by 9pm?

> why couldn't you just sleep earlier at night?

Can you?

Consensus has emerged in the last few years that the circadian rhythm is mostly regulated hormonally, with a strong genetic factor. So that would be akin to telling a black person to "just get whiter skin".

> Everyone complains about having to get up early, but the sleep deprivation is self inflicted. If you're tired, you can sleep at 9pm.

Do you have a reliable way of doing so? If yes, you are sitting on a potential billion-dollar innovation. I'm surprised you haven't monetized it yet.

There's enough artificial light that circadian rhythm barely applies to teens. Yes, I can change my sleep schedule, and have done so multiple times. If you're tired enough to be "sleep deprived" then you're going to be perfectly capable of going to sleep at 10 instead of 1am, barring some insomniac disorder. It's dark outside at both times. Circadian rhythm doesn't overrule real sleep deprivation. If you're tired, you can sleep at night.

> There's enough artificial light that circadian rhythm barely applies to teens.

Citation needed. Circadian rhythm is influenced by a lot more than simply ambiant light.

> If you're tired enough to be "sleep deprived" then you're going to be perfectly capable of going to sleep at 10 instead of 1am, barring some insomniac disorder

Insomniac disorders... like delayed hormonal response causing the circadian rhythm to be out of phase?

> If you're tired, you can sleep at night.

Note that the author eventually sleeps. It's simply out of phase.

I have tried sleeping earlier on times I'm sleep deprived, the only result is me staying in my bed for hours on end without sleeping. As a kid, as I mentioned in my original post, my parents would put me to bed with lights out around 9. I wasn't able to sleep despite being sleep deprived.

Nowadays, I work in a different time zone and due to work and meetings, I sleep around 3am every day. I fall asleep instantly and get my full 7-8 hours of sleep every day. Having the correct rhythm changes everything. I've never been able to do that earlier in the day and I tend to have extreme difficulty adjusting and sleeping earlier if I travel and have to deal with jetlag.

You're lucky but stop assuming that everyone is the same as you and that everyone can sleep early. If you've never known the feeling of being extremely tired and sleep deprived yet not being able to sleep then, I don't see how you can make generalisations and assume that it's the case for everyone else??

At this point, there's plenty of research that shows that your basic understanding is wrong, that circadian rhythm are not only a function of ambient light.

I cannot relate to being sleepy, lying in bed at night, yet unable to sleep. That sounds like the definition of an insomnia disorder. It seems to me that for most of the population, sleeping when sleepy is not going to be an impossible ask. Much of the difficulty goes away when you avoid artificial light, like from phones, in the evenings. It's just that teens would prefer to be sleepy rather than go to bed early and avoid phone.

When I was a teen, I didn't get much artificial light. There was no phones yet to ruin that since it was in the late 90s and iirc incandescent light bulbs do not emit as much of the problematic wavelength as modern lightbulbs. It was also light out in my bedroom between 9 and 9:30pm further reducing how much artificial light I got.

Nowadays, I'm extremely careful to use blue light filters in the evening, I use f.lux or equivalent on any devices I own (due to my work, I cannot avoid using those devices at night) and I make sure to choose appropriate lighting for my house.

It's not insomnia because if I go to sleep at 3am, I fall asleep instantly. When I go to sleep at that time and wake up every day around 10am, 11am (which I luckily can do because as an adult, I work remotely), I can be well rested, having a regular schedule and sleep very quickly. If it were insomnia, then the issue would exist

If, however, I try to go to sleep before midnight, even if I feel tired, I do not fall asleep. I'm pretty much the textbook definition of a night owl and pretty much an extreme one at that. It's not for lack of trying, because, when I first started working, I had to wake up early, had to try to go to sleep early and was unable to. It's been a significant handicap and it's why I had to find ways to get jobs that work with my schedule to improve my quality of life.

You might be right that teens have a tendency to want to push bedtime but there's also been plenty of studies that have shown that teens have better sleep when going to sleep late and waking up late. At this point, it's well established that people have different chronotype and a small minority are "night owls" to varying degrees.

Please read the research and don't make generalisations based on your own experience. I've been told before by acquaintances and family that not going to bed early and waking up early is unhealthy, lazy, name any negative adjectives you can think of. And yes, if I try hard, I can wake up early every weekday, it's just that I'll be exhausted by the end of the week, will need the weekend to recover and will have very poor quality of life.

> Much of the difficulty goes away when you avoid artificial light, like from phones, in the evenings. It's just that teens would prefer to be sleepy rather than go to bed early and avoid phone

Ahh ok, this isn't medical research. It's the good old boomer rant that "phone bad".

I get it now.

No, I couldn't sleep earlier, simple as that. In fact, I went on to have more serious insomnia around the time I left high school, which lasted for a few years.

my solution worked ok: sleep at school. it's not ideal, but it also saved me from being entirely brainwashed and prevented teachers from killing my creativity.

let's not ignore the fact schools were designed long ago to 1/ shape future factory workers into well behaved blue collars, while 2/ making it possible for parents to go to work.

before the industrial revolution, most people were farmers. Kids were out playing, stayed home safe or participated to gardening activities.

the issue with school is far more deep rooted into how our society sadly operates. it may be impossible to fix one without addressing the other.

> before the industrial revolution, most people were farmers. Kids were out playing, stayed home safe or participated to gardening activities.

Ah yes, the good old times where nobody could read or write and your only perspective in life was to be a farmer like your father and his father before him!

No one is claiming that was better, just giving a brief history of how we got where we are.

as other comment pointed out, nobody is making a value comparison, but since you are at it, at least let's not be derogatory about farmers life. there is still a good portion of the world population living that lifestyle. Having been closely in touch with some, a few interesting things stood out to me: they have outstanding communication skills and are very pragmatic, down to earth when assessing their own situation vs the urbanised population, are far less easily influenced and seem to have a gotten a far more hollistic education. they navigate a difficult economy where they produce undoubtly tremendous value yet get a small share of the reward and respect. To get back on the thread subject, I don't recall having seen any sleep deprived farmers, despite the hard labour they have to participate in each day of their hardship seasons. I'm not sure what is their only perspective, it may well be to be a farmer, I never asked that question since it appeared to me that they aren't suffering existential issues. what is your perspective(s) in life? other than being able to read, write and not being a farmer?

I've cared sharing your comment with two farmers, they appear to be able to read so their response may not be representative of the audience you had in mind: Be a farmer just one day and you will change your mind. I think it's wise advice as it wouldn't take long rethoric for some truth to reveal itself, and surely would be a valuable experience.

I don't think anyone would call modern farmers illiterate - did you miss the "before the industrial revolution" bit?

I don't understand where you see any correlation between the two in my comment.

If you mean sleep in a dorm at school, I'll have you know that didn't help either.

First class of the day was at 730 and what that really meant was rolling out of bed at 725 still in my clothes from last night and trudging over to the building next door where I would be marked present and immediately fall asleep in my desk. The first class was utterly worthless as far as I know and I learned not a thing. Shower and change of clothes and actually starting my day happend during breakfast break later.

Part of the problem, imo, is that quiet time in the dorm started at 1045 but was poorly enforced so often it was impossible to get to sleep till 1130 or later.

I just wanted to comment on how interesting it is to observe differences in upbringing and culture :)

When reading the parent comment, I naturally assumed they were talking about sleeping in class, as that wasy solution to the sleep problem as well. To this day I routinely meet people that seem to file this possibility away in the "impossible" drawer of their minds or assume that "this person doesn't look like trash that sleeps during class" and conclude that there's been a misunderstanding.

Just to be clear, I am not lashing out at you (or anyone), and just wanted to make this comment more vivid to emphasize how expectations and assumptions make it all too easy to misinterpret a statement as a "typo" of a different statement altogether.

We rejected several schools last year for exactly this reason.

One in particular made a huge virtue out of being super early. That one we didn't even bother assessing on other dimensions.

> a huge virtue out of being super early

'Early to bed, early to rise,' said Ben Franklin. Great advice for those whose chronotypes match this attitude. Not for the other 40% though ... for them, this 'virtue' is an inescapable prison.

"In morning people, sleep drive and chronotype tend to be aligned. Their internal clocks are pretty well synchronized with their over-all energy levels. For night owls, however, things get complicated. When the sun comes up, the light resets their circadian clocks, telling them to wake up. But, because of their chronotypes, they don’t have much energy and they want to go back to sleep." - [https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/moral-morn...]

In Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker there is a fascinating chapter about how teenagers are biologically programmed to sleep later and wake up later as well. He then explains that basically sending teenagers to school early in the morning is terrible health-wise and prevents optimal brain development.

Anecdata of course but I remember much like you being extremely sleepy at school all day and sleeping a lot on weekends.

I would hesitate at using that book. Riddled with errors or non-factual stuff. Been discussed previously here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850

I bought the latest version and he seems to have addressed the problems brought up there.

All books are gonna have errors especially in their first version. Doesn't mean it's better to just never read anything about any subject.

I bought the original.

It's a good read but yea the guy wrote in depth into false claims , and only changed what he wrote based on pushback in a new book.

I chalk it up to more than just errors.

His new book "new science..." This "science" was available at time of his original publishing of first version

It's not really a case of typos or the odd error, more like a disinterest in the truth and a preference to just write a narrative and sprinkling fake citations to make it look scientific.

Just the first person to really review it, found 15 major errors and inaccuracies in the first chapter, and gave up due to the time it would take to review the rest of the book.

On top of that, the author doubles down when called out, and doesn't want to discuss any of the actual details or admit any errors or misrepresentations, like cutting data out of a graph when it would give readers a different conclusion than the text.

Some of the errors are positively dangerous, like claiming that the recommended number of hours of sleep is 8, instead of the true figure of 7-9.

"I spent more than 130 hours over the last 2 months researching and writing this essay (~5 hours to write the outline; ~60 hours to get to the first draft; ~65 hours to edit and fact-check), which constituted essentially all of my surplus free time over this time period. Continuing at the same pace, it would take me more than 3,000 hours to check the entire book. 3,000 hours is the equivalent of 75 weeks or 1.4 years of full-time work."

> I remember waking up to go to school every morning at 6:45 and taking the bus every day at 7:05 when I was in high school in France.

I see you too practiced the fine arts of the tight schedule between snoozing the alarm clock and catching the bus :].

1AM? you are tough mate. I was in bed by 10PM-10:30 in high school, broken in every sense of the word. If I was lucky I could actually pull off a 11PM but it was rare.

Oh I was tired just wasn't able to sleep... Once I left high school and started university, I did pretty well on a schedule of sleeping at 1/2 am and waking up around 9:30 before going to class (unfortunately skipping any classes that were scheduled from 8 to 10).

School in France starts at 8 or later, so not living an hour away from school would have helped... I was waking up at 7:30.

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