ENCORE: Teens and Sleep, with Journalist & Author Lisa L. Lewis

The Ask Lisa Podcast does not constitute medical advice and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have concerns about your child’s well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional.

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Reena Ninan:
Encore Episode 230 with special guest and author Lisa L. Lewis on Sleep.
You know, we did an Instagram live recently, Lisa, and we got so many questions about parents who want to talk about sleep. Why do you think this is just top of mind for everyone?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Because I hammer on it endlessly in our conversations. And it’s one of those things I’m so reassured that parents keep asking about it and want to keep talking about it because every time I bring it up I think, oh, we know, know what we’re supposed to do. Maybe this isn’t fresh and important. It is fresh. It is important and people don’t know what to do.

Reena Ninan:
You’re absolutely right. Well, I’m excited about our guest. I want to go ahead and introduce her. Lisa L. Lewis is a journalist who’s focused on parenting education and public health. She’s the author of an incredible book, I absolutely love this one. It’s called “The Sleep Deprived Teen. Why Our Teenagers Are So Tired and How Parents And Schools Can Help Them Thrive”.
Her book was actually born out of her role in helping get California’s landmark law on healthy school start times passed. She’s also a parent of two and currently lives in California with her family. Lisa, welcome.

Lisa L. Lewis:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Reena Ninan:
And we’ve got two Lisas, so for everyone to be able to keep track at home. We’ve got our Dr. Lisa who’s on every week, and we’ve got you Lisa too, so we can kind of keep track of everyone here.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Reena, you know this makes you the cult jam.

Reena Ninan:
The what?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
The cult jam. Lisa, Lisa, and the Cult Jam. Oh, this may be…

Reena Ninan:
That’s a cultural reference I’m not following.

Lisa L. Lewis:
This is a Gen X reference.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Exactly. You have to be, I’m 53. You have to be…

Reena Ninan:
I’m 44.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. Reena, go look it up after this episode. That’s where our nine years don’t line up at all these. Lisa, Lisa, and The Cult Jam was a fabulous band. I think they might’ve been a one hit wonder.

Reena Ninan:
All right, I’m going to look this up. Are they on Spotify? I hope.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’m sure they are, I’m sure they are.
Anyway, Lisa, we are so excited to have you here. Thank you for joining us and like I said, sleep, I value it so much. I talk about it so much. I know it’s the glue that holds everybody together and I will say I feel like it’s one of those places where families and kids feel like they can compromise, where it gets crowded out by other things. We know how important it is for mental health. So we are so glad to have you here. And so I want to get us started just by talking about some of what you cover in your book about all of the research, especially coming out of Stanford University, about kids and sleep. What did they find?

Lisa L. Lewis:
Yes, and it’s such a good point because this is not really new research. It really has been around for decades and in fact the first real in-depth studies of teen sleep did take place at Stanford. As you mentioned. It was called the “Stanford Summer Sleep Camp”. So it was this great kind of combination pseudo summer camp for the kids, but it really was a long-term sleep study and it ran there from 1976 to 1985 and that was really some of the first research to pinpoint that teens truly do sleep differently than younger kids do.

Reena Ninan:
Lisa, what do you think it is that parents don’t know about sleep that you, having studied this and worked in this and really getting the lack of sleep and what it can do, what do most parents not understand about sleep?

Lisa L. Lewis:
Great question. I think just sort of to start with the basics, because it’s so important to have this kind of common foundation of understanding because sleep is a struggle I think for all of us. To be fair, not just our teens, it is for us as adults as well, but our teens are not yet adults. A lot of them are starting to look very much like adults by the time they’re 16, 17, but they are still undergoing so much development and they still need more sleep than we do as adults. So I think one of the first pieces of information that’s so important to remember is that our teens should be getting eight to 10 hours of sleep every single night. Those are the official recommendations, and that’s up until age 18, after which point it does go down slightly. Our range as adults is seven to nine hours.
So when you hear eight hours as sort of this magic perfect number, well that’s great for us as adults. That’s the midpoint of our range. That’s the minimum that our teens should be getting.
And also I should point out when I’m mentioning that this range for teens, this is up to age 18, but for our younger teens and our tweens, it’s actually even more, it’s nine to 11 hours every single night. So I think that is one of those really important things to keep in mind because as Dr. Lisa was mentioning, sleep so often does sort of get squeezed out of the picture and it becomes easy to sort of rationalize that, oh, well if I’m getting seven hours or eight hours, that’s still okay. And yet it really does have some long-term impacts when our teens are chronically sleep deprived.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So let’s just get down to business. We have incredible questions from our listeners, so I’m just going to start with this one right here.
“I just don’t see a universe in which expecting kids to have lights out at eight 30 will happen or is reasonable. We do have a no-screens-after-nine rule and my 11-year-old seems to have a good sense of what she needs and will go to bed earlier when she needs to. The 13-year-old, ironically, seems to need more sleep and is definitely not a night owl. When I encourage earlier lights out, she says her body isn’t ready for sleep yet or that she needs time to unwind, what should I do?”

Lisa L. Lewis:
Both of those are great observations by the 13-year-olds about not necessarily being sleepy and needing time to unwind because both of those are also key points I think for parents to really keep in mind. So one of the things that began to be discovered at Stanford, as we were mentioning at the beginning was that teens have this different sleep schedule. So not only do they need more sleep than we do as adults, they actually are on a later sleep schedule than they were when they were younger. So what happens is pretty much at adolescence is when the shift takes place in their circadian rhythms, which governs their sleep awake schedules and so they are not feeling sleepy as early as they used to. So by age 13, I would expect that has likely kicked in. And so what that means is that your teen is probably not, and again, this happens throughout the teen years, so it’s more pronounced for older teens, but even for a 13-year-old, probably not feeling sleepy as early as they used to.
Generally speaking, probably not until closer to about 11 o’clock. And this has to do with melatonin, which is the hormone that primes us to feel sleepy, which actually begins to be released later in the evening as our kids enter the teen years and doesn’t subside until later in the morning, which is why on the other end in the mornings so many parents will notice that their kids are not bounding out of bed the way they used to when they were little. Their teens do not wake up on their own at 6:30, but that absolutely…

Reena Ninan:
Wait, wait. So Lisa, you just dropped something really great, I just want to make sure I got this right. You’re saying that there’s a point in a teen’s life where their body actually makes them go to sleep later?

Lisa L. Lewis:
Yes, and that is also such a key point to emphasize here because otherwise so often there’s sort of this sense, oh, well, teens must just be stubborn. They’re just staying up late when they truly are not feeling sleepy. So you can put a teen to bed at 8:30 or 9:00 and say it’s lights out, but that doesn’t necessarily make them fall asleep because they aren’t feeling sleepy. And that again gets back to melatonin, this hormone that primes us to feel sleepy, that isn’t released until later in the evening. Teens truly are on this unique schedule. It’s later than it was when they were little, but it’s also later than what we have as adults because this sort of peaks about age 20 a little bit earlier for girls, a little bit later for boys and then gradually drifts back, which is why again, our teens are on a schedule that is different than our schedule as adults too. They’re wanting to stay up long past the point where we want lights out.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
This is why I’m falling asleep on the couch and my 13-year-old is wide awake.

Lisa L. Lewis:
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s the melatonin that is to blame for this.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And do all teens have roughly the same pattern? Or do you see sort of differences across teens?

Lisa L. Lewis:
That’s a great question. So I think what’s important to keep in mind for all of us is there is of course human variability. So there is a range, and this range is a two hour range, which is pretty broad when you think about it. In fact, the sleep recommendations I was referencing come from the National Sleep Foundation, they were updated, I think it was 2015, and they actually broadened the ranges to account for the fact that for any of us as an adult, someone might feel great with seven hours of sleep, someone else might really need nine hours of sleep because there is this range. And so the same with our teens. This range of eight to 10 hours means some of them are going to do great with eight hours, some of them may need closer to 10, and then of course you will have some that are outliers. But for the vast range of our teenagers, this is the guideline of what they truly need in order to be their best and to feel well rested and to be able to function well in the world.

Reena Ninan:
So we’ve got this other question from a parent, which is great. They’re saying, “I’d love to hear your thoughts on fostering a calming bedtime environment that helps my child unwind and adhere to his sleep schedule, ensuring he wakes up refreshed and ready for the day.”
I think what it is parents want to know what can we do to set up the environment before they go to bed so their sleep is really as great as it can be so they can be refreshed?

Lisa L. Lewis:
Yes. So this concept of a wind down routine is really important and it’s really sort of the same thing we did for our kids when they were little.
When you think about when you had a 2-year-old you probably had a very well-defined, carefully crafted bedtime routine where you would read books in the same sequence and it would include a snuggle and it was all very prescribed and it’s a very regimented routine to sort of help ensure they would get a good night’s sleep. So obviously we’re not going to be as hands-on when our kids are teens, but this concept of a wind down routine is still so important.
So a couple of things to keep in mind for that. One is disconnecting from tech, which Dr. Lisa, I’ve heard you say, if you had one rule you could give parents about tech, it’s keep it out of the bedrooms and that is absolutely a best practice. It aligns with the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations, which is ideally you keep the tech out of the bedroom, but you also disengage an hour before bedtime. So that’s the first piece in place of that, identifying some sort of calming type of activities because being on social media, playing a video game, not calming, not helping you drift off. So instead, and this is where this is sort of up to the teen, what works best for them because it could be taking a warm bath, it could be reading, old school, an actual book, could be listening to a podcast.
So they’re not actually looking at their screens, but they’re listening to something that maybe they’ve heard before and it’s something that they enjoy listening to and helps them calm down. It could be yoga or meditation, it could be coloring. Some people really enjoy coloring as a meditative exercise. So it’s sort of figuring out what is it that works for that particular teen that helps them feel like they’re disengaging from being active and doing homework, talking with their friends instead doing something calming that helps bridge that time and set them up to be able to drift off to sleep.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. So then on that, one of the questions I often hear from parents is they’ll say, okay, but my kid likes to watch reruns in her bed, so she’ll take her computer. So she will give me her phone, she will sign off of social media, but she loves to watch old episodes of “Friends”, old episodes of “Parks and Recreation”. That’s her wind down in bed and she sleeps, she falls asleep and she sleeps. I always feel so torn when I get a question like that, how do you answer that kind of question?

Lisa L. Lewis:
Well, in that situation it sounds like maybe it’s not an issue. So that’s also where it’s figuring out what works.
In the ideal scenario, all the devices, including the computer, would be out of the bedroom, certainly wouldn’t be in the bed. You could in that case be listening to that episode on headphones, not watching. Because then you eliminate the potential blue light impact of all these backlit screens because that’s the other piece of it as you know, it’s what they’re doing can be stimulating and engaging. If they’re Snapchatting with friends or they’re playing a video game, watching something is not quite as arousing, it’s not going to keep them awake to the same degree, but there is the potential for the blue light impact. So in that scenario, perhaps listening to the episode might be a good compromise.

Reena Ninan:
And this blue light thing is really a real thing, that we know? It really keeps us up?

Lisa L. Lewis:
It is a real thing.
Interestingly enough though, so there are three ways that tech use can impact sleep and of the three blue light is probably the least impactful. So, first we’ve got the fact that when they’re online, it can be stimulating and engaging as I was mentioning, because if they are in a video game, they are in some sort of intense emotional back and forth with friends, that’s not helping them wind down.
There’s also the time displacement factor because at some point if you are online and it’s one o’clock in the morning, you are quite literally cutting into time. You could have been asleep.
But then the third piece is the blue light piece. So again, compared to those other two, probably doesn’t have quite as much of an impact, but absolutely something to still be aware of because these backlit devices do emit blue light.
So even thinking about if you’re watching TV and it’s across the room, that’s less blue light that is actually hitting your eyes than if you’ve got your phone and it’s six inches from your face. So that’s something else to be aware of.
So the ideal scenario, again, having those devices out of the bedroom, there are other approaches too though. There are these night shift modes you can turn on or have set to turn on automatically so that it’s a warmer spectrum of light. There are blue blocker glasses you can use. So that’s also something to consider if say your teen is going to be online later at night still doing homework, well being able to dim that screen somewhat is going to help ameliorate a bit of that blue light impact.

Reena Ninan:
We have another question from one of our parents here asking, “How do I explain to my teen and even to parents why sleep is so important for the teenage brain? This is so hard to get through.”

Lisa L. Lewis:
And I get back to the fact, sleep is important for all of us, but we could argue it’s even more important during the teen years when they are still growing and developing. There’s so much taking place that we see on the outside, but there’s also so much going on internally too. The teen years and even into the young adult years is a time of tremendous brain remodeling.
So we’ve got two processes taking place, pruning away the excess brain cells so that the ones that are there can function more effectively, but also remodeling in terms of strengthening and speeding the connections between brain cells, between regions of the brain. So all this is taking place. The other key to remember is that so much of this does happen while they’re sleeping. Sleep is essential for pretty much every single aspect of their lives. You think about what’s their primary function during the day when they’re at school learning?
Well, the whole process of consolidating and storing that information and synthesizing it and moving it from short-term into long-term storage that takes place at night while they’re sleeping. If they’re an athlete, it may resonate that sleep is actually a competitive advantage. Whatever your teen’s specific sport is, chances are there is a pro athlete who is out there and is very public and vocal about the fact that they value their sleep. If it’s skiing, you can look at McKayla Schiffrin. If it’s basketball, you can look at Andre Iguodala. They are very, very committed to getting enough sleep because they know what it means for them out on the field or on the court.

Reena Ninan:
That is great, because I was going to ask you my next question is, how does sleep or the lack of sleep affect mental health and athletic performance for kids? I feel like sometimes when you’re really into sports, it’s a way to get in to get them to understand why it’s so important.

Lisa L. Lewis:
Absolutely, yeah. And that may be the way in that may really resonate with a kid or a teen who’s an athlete. So there was this terrific study again out of Stanford, and this was over a decade ago now, but this pretty seminal study in the field of sleep and sports. So the researcher actually worked with the men’s basketball team and had them stay in bed longer, up to 10 hours, as a way to increase the amount of sleep they were getting. As a result of this, they went from getting less than seven hours of sleep, again, less than that minimum, to about eight and a half hours of sleep. And then what was really, really impressive was what that meant in terms of their performance. They ended up posting a 9% increase in terms of successful free throws, a 9% increase in three point field goals and faster sprint times.
So this was one of those studies that really sort of made people in the sports field kind of sit up and take notice to recognize that these were already top athletes and yet when they were getting enough sleep, it absolutely improved their performance.
So that’s one piece of it. And then you look on the other end. Yeah, absolutely. They’re better athletes as a result. It also helps prevent injuries, which is also key of course, because if you are sleep deprived, your response time is affected, your coordination is affected. There’s not one coach out there that’s going to say to somebody the night before a big game, oh, stay out all night. I mean, they know getting a good night’s sleep is so essential.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
What I love about this, Lisa, is these are the kinds of facts that do change teenager’s minds when adults are able to say, look, you care about your sport. Here’s what the data show on your sports performance and sleep. That in my experience, is much more powerful than just nagging. I mean, as soon as we’re nagging kids, we’ve lost them already.

Lisa L. Lewis:
Oh, absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
But these things really make a difference.

Lisa L. Lewis:
I think we didn’t yet get to mental health, which I think is such a key aspect and I know you’d asked about earlier, so I just want to be sure that we do touch on that because…

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa L. Lewis:
…it’s so essential. Sleep is so essential for emotional resiliency and not just for our kids, for us too as adults.
I remember, Lisa, when I was interviewing you for my book, and one of the quotes from you was that when kids are well rested and when we as parents are well rested, everything just, it goes that much more smoothly. And it’s so true because we all have a full emotional tank with which to interact with each other. And on the flip side, when we haven’t gotten enough sleep, and this is true for us as adults too, but even more so for our teens, but we’re more reactive. We feel things more intensely. And then for our teens who are still in the midst of this major phase of brain development, they don’t yet have a fully mature prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for executive functioning and rational decision making and helps kind of dampen that increase in emotional intensity. So we have that at least to help us when we haven’t gotten enough sleep, our teens do not. So being sleep deprived, in a sense, is felt even more acutely for our teens.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
You’ve already given us so much to go on in terms of why teens need more sleep, what gets in the way and how to help them get there. What else? What else do you have in terms of changes adults can make, teens can make that are going to allow for more sleep?

Lisa L. Lewis:
A few things. The first is making sleep a family priority. That’s one of the messages that I really always try and emphasize because, as you mentioned, nagging not a great approach, not super effective, not super fun for anyone involved in that interaction. And as our teens are getting older, having them take ownership of this process is so much more effective. We are more hands-on – I mean this is sort of a microcosm of parenting overall when it comes to our kids’ sleep. We are much more hands-on when they are younger. Our role gradually lessens as they get older. And ultimately, of course, we are preparing them for not living under our roof. So, when they are no longer at home, when they’re off at college or in an apartment, we won’t be there to remind them that they’re supposed to get off their devices or remind them of their bedtime.
So ultimately this does have to be self-driven. So having this be a conversation with your teen and having them provide input and also we take ownership of this is a far more effective long-term strategy.
Lisa, I’ve heard you ask this question before that when someone comes to you and says their kid is struggling academically, your first question is, well, what’s getting in the way? And that is the same question when it comes to sleep to ask, well, what is it in my particular kid’s situation, what is it that is impacting their ability to get to sleep on time? Are they waking too early in the morning because of school start times? Are they staying up at night because of anxiety, but trying to pinpoint what it is and then being able to address those issues.

Reena Ninan:
Lisa, I know summer is just around the corner. What’s your advice to parents who know teens and kids just start to fight having later bed times? How do we deal with that in the summer months when sometimes it feels like the wheels come off the bus?

Lisa L. Lewis:
Yeah, that’s a tricky one because for so many of us, we are waking because we need to because our alarm clock is chiming and not because it’s our natural inherent wake time. So certainly if that’s not the case in the summer, being able to relax those rules a little seems fine as long as there is kind of a transition period before the first day of school because you can’t sort of just flip a switch and automatically be able to adjust without feeling the effects of that. Which in fact is somewhat the same approach to keep in mind when it comes to the amount of sleep that your kid or teen is getting during the week, and then if they’re sleeping in on weekends, that the bigger that gap is, the harder that transition will be to bounce back from. Because if you’ve got a teen who’s sleeping in until noon on Sunday, let’s say, well, they’re probably not going to be able to fall asleep and feel sleepy enough to fall asleep at a reasonable hour when Sunday night rolls around and then that can end up perpetuating the cycle. So sort of the same approach when it comes to summer to keep that mind and if it does get way out of whack to allow enough transition time to get back into a schedule more conducive to their schedule during the school year.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So I like that. So we can ease up a bit in the summer. They can stay up later if they can sleep in later, but then putting some runway on the school year and getting back into school year routines.

Lisa L. Lewis:
Absolutely.

Reena Ninan:
I know you had a huge role in getting the law passed to have early start times in California. It took three tries, but you managed to get it through and there’s some breaking news, there’s another state following it. Tell us about that state and what can parents do if they want to change their start times at school on a local level?

Lisa L. Lewis:
Yes. So you were right. My entree into this topic did have to do with the situation in my own household when my son was entering high school at that point, our local high school started at 7:30.
So that started me on this journey. Ended up getting involved in helping spur our law in California became the first state in the country to pass a law setting, minimum required start times. And now there is a second state that has signed a similar law and that state is Florida. And that law in Florida was signed into law in 2023, won’t go into effect until 2026, because there is a three year implementation window. But that’s huge when you think about the fact that five of the 10 largest school districts in the country are in Florida. So just in terms of the magnitude, the number of students who will be affected, that plus California, which we’ve got over 3.2 million students in public, middle, and high schools. So these laws at the statewide level really, I think, have the broadest impact in terms of changing the situation for the most number of students. That’s not to say though that parents can’t be active at the local level. Because up until now, up until this law in California, this is how all the changes took place. And there are literally hundreds of districts around the country that have already changed their start times.

Reena Ninan:
And what can parents at a local level do?

Lisa L. Lewis:
Yes. So if you are a parent and your kid’s school is starting at say 7:30 or even seven o’clock, they are high schools starting at seven o’clock as we speak.
I know, I see Dr. Lisa is sort of aghast at that and yet that…

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Drop jawed by that. Yes.

Lisa L. Lewis:
Yes. That is the case though. Las Vegas, Nashville, I mean these are cities where regular, this is not zero period either. This is regular first period, mandatory attendance first bell ringing at 7:00 AM.
So if you’re in a district where that’s the case, I think it starts with education. It starts with setting this kind of foundation of understanding. Getting back to what we started with, how many hours of sleep do our teens truly need? And then when you think about the fact if they’ve got to start at seven, they have to get up at what, 5:30 and you do the math. For them to get 8 to 10 hours of sleep, they’d have to be going to bed at a time that just is not realistic. So getting involved at the local level means helping share this information, bringing in a speaker to help kind of raise the issue, getting other parents involved. In California, there were two groups that actually co-sponsored the bill that then was signed into law.
One was a group called Start School Later. National nonprofit; you can start a chapter. They’ve got tremendous wealth of resources. The second was the California State PTA, because the PTA is all about health and wellness for kids. So you could even team with your local PTA, bring in a speaker, raise the issue at the school board, ideally finding an advocate somewhere within the school system. If you have an administrator or a school board member who is on board with this, that absolutely is going to make it go a little bit more smoothly. But you can make change happen at the local level and beyond.

Reena Ninan:
I love that it started with your op-ed in the LA Times that a state senator saw and had a team. So, change happens.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Lisa, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for talking about my favorite subject. Thank you for the work you do, and thank you for being there for teenagers and trying to help protect their sleep.

Lisa L. Lewis:
Absolutely. And thank you, Lisa. I know I was able to interview you for my book and it’s a tremendous honor to be here. Thank you.

Reena Ninan:
The book is called “The Sleep Deprived Teen, Why Our Teenagers Are So Tired and How Parents and Schools Can Help Them Thrive”.
Journalist Lisa L. Lewis. Thank you so much for joining us.

Lisa L. Lewis:
Thank you.

Reena Ninan:
I get it. You’ve always sounded the alarm on why sleep is so important. What do you have for us for Parenting To Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, I want to pick up on something that Lisa said that I think is such a great framework for thinking about these kinds of problems. Which is the importance of figuring out what’s getting in the way of a kid’s sleep in order to fix kid’s sleep.
So I think she wove into things. First, If there’s an issue, if there’s not an issue, you probably don’t need to something, right? If your kid is sleeping enough, they’re falling asleep, they’re staying asleep, you could probably leave it alone, whatever’s happening. But if there’s an issue, what you want to do, and this is how we think as clinicians, first you diagnose the problem, then you treat the problem. So is the issue that they’re not falling asleep, that they’re too worried and their mind is spinning with anxiety or that they fall asleep but they can’t stay asleep, or it’s not dark enough in their room, or it’s not cold enough in their room? So taking time to really suss out what the problem is and then address that very directly and deliberately is exactly the kind of, diagnose and then treat, that really gets results as opposed to just throwing everything you’ve got at the problem and hoping something sticks.

Reena Ninan:
Because so many parents struggle with getting their kids to get down and get calm and go to bed, and it was really valuable to hear her say that there’s a reason of what’s happening internally to these kids in their teenage years, that they’re not just being belligerent and annoying, that there’s something there.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
They are much more able to stay up than when they were little kids and they’d pass out in front of the TV before we would. Now they pass out. I pass out if my kid is wide awake.

Reena Ninan:
That’s absolutely right. Absolutely right. Well, great. I learned so much. So thank you very much to both of our Lisas today and Dr. Lisa. I’ll see you next week.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll see you next week.