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Regarding the bad you listed, the article addresses it and basically debunks your concern. Schools that made the change saw teens getting more sleep.

> When Seattle’s public-school district shifted its start time in 2016 (from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m.), students got a median of an additional 34 minutes of sleep a night as a result. And in Cherry Creek, a Denver-area suburb, high schoolers slept about 45 minutes longer on average, and those improvements endured even two years after the change.

I’m also not sure what’s so “ugly” about your “ugly” point. Starting school later isn’t about solving every possible problem for at-risk kids.

> I’m also not sure what’s so “ugly” about your “ugly” point.

A very short version of my answer to this is that it's a big deal because if this sort of action is portrayed to the public as solving the mental health crisis in teens, then the real reasons for many issues might be completely ignored. The bureaucracy might claim a false victory and then hope everybody moves on and ignores some bigger issues that creates such an unhealthy environment in schools.

I don't think this was portrayed as "solving the mental health crisis."

Teenagers wanting to stay up late is natural, not the product of some social evil but a built in feature of being a teenager.

Less of a feature and more of a "known issue".

A known issue that I'm still trying to sort out in my 30s.

> Despite having a later wakeup time, I think most teens will probably not get a whole lot of extra sleep. Kids are kids and will stay up later to play games ...

This needn't be true, the natural time for teens to go to sleep is 10-11pm [0]. So at this time they may feel tired, and go to sleep.

[0] https://www.uclahealth.org/sleepcenter/sleep-and-teens

I think you're overstating what the source is saying a bit. Yes, that's literally what the source says, but it feels exemplary and to the extent it's true, it's true because of a lot of hidden assumptions. The source is basically saying "a normal teen in a vacuum gets sleepy at this time" but it points out many ways in which teens are not in any such vacuum and how they should be trying to get into and stay in that vacuum. A real teen doesn't live in that vacuum.

Teens are already staying up past their natural sleepiness time. Sleepiness is not the problem.

The problem with teens and sleep is not just that we expect them to get up early. We also expect them to go to school, do sometimes hours of homework, do as many extra-curricular activities as they can cram onto a CV, have jobs, spend time with family, and they usually want to have fun with friends and date. They're already sleeping as much as they can. (Many of them are also abusing caffeine and other drugs to manage all of it.)

Humans have two mechanisms for sleepiness. The first is a 'time since last sleep' function that builds sleepiness over time. This is delayed in teen. (This mechanism will respond poorly to later start times.) The second is a 'has it gotten dark' function that responds to the daylight. This is also delayed in teens.

Very likely many teens will simply stay up later. They'll have to in order to keep doing all they want and are expected to do.

However, the delayed start is still a good thing because it is much better aligned with the second mechanism of sleepiness, gives them more opportunities for sleep, and will likely reduce their morning grogginess, even if they don't get more sleep overall.

> > The Ugly: I think acknowledging the mental health crises among many kids is a good step, but I don't think you're going to really fix anybody who might be in a danger zone by telling them that they have the option to wake up a bit later. I sincerely doubt that a sleep deficit is the issue that inspires extremely negative life-threatening behavior among anybody.

Lack of sleep can easily exacerbate symptoms of what might be transient or mild mental illness, and allow them to develop into chronic problems with the potential for acute breakdowns.

There are some antidepressants that are on the market that are speculated to work not from their specific actions on neurotransmitters, like how SSRIs are hypothesized to work, but from the fact that they help with disordered sleep. They help with sleep by increasing the length of time the patient sleeps each night, and there's a correlation with getting sufficient sleep and reduction in symptoms of mental illness like depression, and symptoms like stress and anxiety, along with other illness like anxiety disorders and what not.

In its most extreme, lack of sufficient sleep over time can even trigger transient psychosis in otherwise mentally sound people. For those with predispositions for psychotic illness, sleep deficits can bring those symptoms to the surface, while someone who has those same predispositions and gets sufficient amounts sleep might never actually experience them ever in their lives. I think this is important for psychotic disorders specifically, as they usually present in early adolescence, so reducing factors that can exacerbate them is important. Psychotic disorders can and do ruin lives, however the severity of those disorders decreases the longer someone goes without experiencing them. A 17 year old with a predisposition for schizophrenia-related disorders who doesn't experience psychosis early on could very likely never experience those symptoms later in life, and live a normal life. That same person who does experience those symptoms, perhaps triggered by sleep deprivation, might walk away with a chronic condition that's expensive, significantly lowers their potential lifespan, and can be utterly disabling.

tl;dr: the amount of sleep, and types of sleep, really do matter when it comes to mental health

I understand that sleep is a variable worth studying and improving and that somebody on the edge of the bubble might be pushed over that edge if they also had to simultaneously deal with a lack of good sleep.

But why are so many people getting to that edge? People have been dealing with not enough sleep for a very long time and we didn't see some current day problems in the past. To me, this seems to show that a lack of sleep is probably not anywhere close to the biggest variable when it comes to the major mental health challenges that the current generation faces.

Theory. Sleep might be emphasized here by officialdom because it's one of the few additional variables that's politically correct enough to start to discuss and tackle. They can try and tackle sleep because no school administrator/media entity/politician is going to get cancelled (yet) for trying to ensure that the students get enough sleep.

About the ugly: While I don't think just being tired is the essential cause of many problems, it does seem like it could be pretty wide-ranging. So, if every decision you make is a little bit worse and your emotional state is always just a little big degraded, this seems like it could compound pretty easily -- you'll be dealing with the consequences of your previous poor decisions while still tired and irritable.

re: your PS - it will depend on the school district, but my daughter’s high school is significantly extending their day. They were allowed to leave this year at 225 (with an optional 7th period that went to 310). Next year, they end at 329. And she gains no benefit in the morning because they already started first period at 830.