Snoozing & Zooming

On student sleep schedules before and after COVID-19

Caroline Schafer

The pandemic has led students to sleeping in, staying up late, forming new hobbies, wasting time, and spending time in new ways that change student sleep schedules. The Tower sent out a survey that 176 students responded to about their sleep schedules. In the survey, 41 percent of students reported that they are sleeping less during quarantine than during a regular school year.Before the pandemic, 25% of students reported getting more than 8 hours of sleep. This is solid because the CDC says 8-10 hours of sleep is optimal for teenage years. However, since the pandemic, only 15.7% say they’re getting over 8 hours. Teenagers who don’t get enough sleep are less able to concentrate, experience increased anxiety levels, and depression. That 10% actually decreased their amount of sleep into the 6-8 hours range. A shocking 72 percent of students say they feel tired during Zoom classes; in comparison, less than half feel tired during in-person learning. Students identified the driving force behind these changes as the fact that their teachers have been assigning too much work. The second biggest problem that students identified was procrastination. Students at Bishop’s are mostly sleepy over Zoom and get less sleep during this pandemic. Some students who have found themselves with a worse sleep schedule after quarantine blame both the online situation and the amount of free time on their hands. Ali Pittal (‘21) said, “I’d say I’m not getting enough sleep as I was before COVID, just because being at home all the time makes me work a lot slower.” Gabe Quade (‘21) spoke further on this, “I think what’s most contributing to its problems is having so much time, and I’m home all the time, so I just watch movies and stay up,” he explained. He also mentioned new quarantine video games like Among Us keep him up sometimes. “I play Among us with all my friends at night,” he reported. “We start late and it ends like, around 11:30 p.m., then I’ll chill for like two hours before going to sleep.” Others explained that their issues with sleep predate the pandemic. “I don’t have a healthy sleep schedule,” Victory Johnson (‘23) said “I chose that, though, because I wanted to be successful in both sports and school. I want to get As, and I want to work out everyday. I do both, so I guess I do it to myself.” Gabby Scott (‘21) shared, “It’s really hard to balance all the work for colleges: sharing all your personal info into different systems, writing and rewriting supplementals, finding resources to help with revisions, etc. On top of that, my academics are still at a very high level, and although many of my teachers assign work past the time limit for their class, I’m still forced to do it in an attempt to keep up.”

She elaborated that at this point, she no longer enjoys sports because it just feels like it’s taking away from study and homework time, and affecting her sleep schedule. Students who live far away from Bishop’s explained that they appreciate not having to commute and find themselves getting more sleep. One example of that is Maya Ebel (‘21). “My sleep schedule is better, I feel like I do stay up later, but I do get to sleep in, which is really nice,” she explained. “With this new schedule, I have periods 5 and 8 free, so I can sleep until 9:25 a.m. if I am pushing it every other day. So I get to sleep in and leisurely wake up. It hasn’t been necessarily consistent, but it’s been better for me.” She added on, “It’s senior year; I’m taking 5 APs, and another regular class, so I’m not getting a healthy amount of sleep. But, I’m doing better than I could be doing.” The New York Times backs this up, reporting that “kids at home in the pandemic were going to sleep later—57 minutes later... they were also waking up later, and the differences in wake-up times were larger: They were waking an hour and 52 minutes later.” Another New York Times article called “Some Teenagers Are Creating New Rituals in the Pandemic,” explained that students can spend more time on homework and really understand it because of shorter commutes. Chinese teacher Ms. Esther Hsaio said, “Some of them appreciate the extra 30 minutes to an hour of sleep they get now that they don’t have to commute to school. I think for seniors, not having to have morning advisory also makes it easier for people who need to sleep in.” It would be unrealistic to expect that every student is in the same situation during this pandemic. However, 27% of students felt sleepier over Zoom, and 9.2% of students went from getting over 8 hours of sleep to 6-8 hours. A senior like Maya is an example the 26% of students getting more sleep in quarantine because seniors do not attend advisory, have no commute, and better time management skills. Of course, there are others who have all this extra time, which they can’t manage since it is so uncommon to them, which actually worsens their sleep schedule because they waste more time on devices or work slower, like Gabe. While there isn’t one singular way the pandemic affects all student sleep schedules, the trend seems to be worse for most students. Let’s encourage our classmates who are struggling with procrastination and dedicate time to important things. This new amount of free time is an opportunity to be more rigorous with academic, help the community, or pick up a new hobby. There are new ways to spend your time because of the pandemic, which could be an opportunity rather than a way to waste time.

How many hours of sleep did you get on a regular school night on average when there was no pandemic/quarantine? When you are attending classes on Zoom, how often do you feel tired?