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Students leaving practice and clubs at 5 p.m. may not notice senior Michael Newbold slumped for a nap in the reclined seat of his white Mercedes-Benz.

It’s only on days when he’s been frustrated with too many people, his hands are too jittery and his eyes can’t focus long enough to drive the 6.5 miles home immediately after one of his seven school club commitments.

They definitely won’t hear the ringing of the 30-minute timer he set because his body naturally wakes him up ten minutes before it goes off anyway. He’s accustomed to “not sleeping much” by his personal standards — meaning an average of three hours of sleep each school night. He’s also used to the brain fog that comes with lack of sleep.

Saint Luke’s Hospital Sleep Disorders Center leader Michael Bajkowski is extremely concerned about students like Newbold for the sake of their overall well-being. He has noticed his teen patients sleeping progressively less over his 32 years of practicing sleep medicine, but he’s worried more now than ever about students’ diminishing sleep schedules.

Sleep deprivation due to evolving societal pressures is a growing issue quietly damaging high schoolers’ mental and physical health. More than 87% of U.S. high schoolers sleep far less than the recommended 10 hours, according to the National Sleep Foundation, a percentage that has been increasing annually the last five years. Bajkowski attributes this trend to two major societal changes: the increasing competitiveness in schools and the growing popularity of social media.

“Lack of sleep doesn’t only affect focus,” Bajkowski said. “It has overwhelming health consequences on memory consolidation, athletic functions, increased levels of anxiety and depression, irritability and lack of motivation that are becoming more obvious as society evolves. Consequences of exhaustion and the coping mechanisms to deal with them are both becoming more extreme.”

Seventy percent of East students report experiencing sleep-deprivation that affects their mental health, according to an Instagram poll of 169 students. For Newbold, the negative effect on his mental health stems from overwhelming pressure to excel in academics and extracurriculars.

From Thursday to Saturday two weeks ago, Newbold spent 67 hours writing five college essays, catching up on Calculus homework, brainstorming for the Freelancer magazine, performing with the Color Guard, debating at a tournament, competing with the robotics team and practicing for ROTC. This left time for only five hours of sleep total over the three-day period — a "generous" estimate by Newbold.

At East — one of the top public high schools in Kansas — Newbold justifies his extreme sleeping habits with his desire to beef up his college application. The number of college applicants during the 2021-2022 cycle rose 21% compared to the year prior according to Common App, so Michael feels he needs to stay up later and be more involved to set himself apart.

“There's a gap in the understanding of how sleep-deprived young people actually are,” Newbold said. “Adults might not realize, but academia in general is becoming more competitive which forces students to spend more time working to get that edge.”

Newbold made up for his sleep shortage the Saturday night after his three-day stunt two weeks ago by getting “enough” sleep — he considers any amount over five hours to be plenty. That particular stunt wasn’t even that bad in his opinion, since he didn’t reach the point of exhaustion where he loses his appetite. Normally that happens for him after a four-day streak of less than five hours of sleep total.

“My parents occasionally lecture me on how I should get more sleep, but I just can’t help it,” Newbold said. “I tell them that I have a deadline the next day, and I need to get my work done.”

Senior Tyler Kirchhoff’s parents, like Newbold’s, bug him to go to sleep earlier. On top of balancing AP classes and marching band, he was diagnosed with sleep apnea and insomnia three years ago after struggling to focus in class with hyperactive, ADHD-like symptoms — all contributing to his average of 3-6 hours of sleep each night.

Even though his sleep apnea medication doesn’t work well, he drags himself to school no matter how little sleep he got the night before.

His strategy to make it through the school day is to eat a good breakfast, but exhaustion still catches up to him on his most tired days. One time, his cream cheese bagel wasn't enough to prevent him from lashing out on a classmate for not pulling their weight with a statistics project — something that would never happen if he was fully awake.

The short temper that Kirchhoff and other teens experience is a common symptom of sleep deprivation, according to the National Sleep Foundation. But craving sleep doesn't just make him irritable. His wake-up Cheerios didn't stop him from drowsily backing his car into his trash can or almost dozing off behind the wheel after school.

“I had driven down Somerset to my house so many times that it was almost muscle memory,” Kirchhoff said. “I felt my head slowly bobbing down as I was driving before I snapped up, thinking, ‘Oh my God.’ I didn’t know how much time had passed.”

Bajkowski warns that students should be concerned if they fall asleep in any calm situation, like driving. It’s their brain’s way of begging for more sleep.

“As long as students are busy, they're doing great,” Bajkowski said. “But when they're at a stoplight or catch that idle moment in class, they can easily enter white line hypnosis where they just zone out. Sleepy driving should be seriously avoided.”

Newbold is familiar with the dangers Bajkowski is talking about. The last time he had to nap in the East parking lot was because he knew he’d slipped too far into hypnosis to safely drive the 20-minutes home. Re-parking under the cool shade of a tree in the East parking lot, he shut his eyes for twenty minutes instead.

“I don’t want to say I was hearing things that day, other than a humming noise in the back of my head,” Newbold said. “But what people were saying to me was becoming less and less audible as I was leaving school, and I knew it’d be dangerous if I didn’t nap before driving.”

Bajkowski’s concern is that not everyone is as responsible as Newbold — 66% of East students in an Instagram poll of 250 reported a lack of sleep negatively affecting their driving abilities. Around 21% of fatal car crashes involve a person driving while drowsy, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

The previously pristine hub-caps of senior Vivian Reihl's car are now scratched and worn from drowsy curb checks. It’s hard for her to focus on the road en route to 6 a.m. varsity volleyball practices after hours of homework and working two jobs past midnight.

The blasting siren sound of her alarm — the only ringtone blaring enough to stir her — rips through her head at full volume each morning, but she still struggles to get out of bed after her regular five hours of sleep. It’s tempting to snooze for 15 more minutes and ask her mom to call attendance about her "appointment.” A little too tempting.

Last year, she had 87 total excused absences and received a truancy letter during the last three weeks of school. Her mom won't let it happen again.

“Now I have to physically force myself to sit up and wake up by asking myself, ‘Do you want to be on truancy again this year?’” Reihl said. “I know I can’t get called out anymore, and it’s getting better this year. But I’m still so tired.”

Attendance receptionist Joan Gustafson has noticed a significant increase in the number of students who regularly come in 15 minutes late for mystery appointments — suspected oversleepers — in the past five out of her 17 years in the position. She’s puzzled because this wasn’t an issue when she attended East as part of the class of 1980.

Beyond school commitments, Riehl cites social media as a major reason she stays up late. In a poll of 292 East students, 87% feel like they have to check their phone right before going to sleep. This includes sophomore Ron Phyre, whose brain gets so foggy from being on his phone at night that he normally can’t remember what time he puts it down. He estimates around 2 or 3 a.m. each school night.

Elongated exposure to blue light from screens in the evening, like that of Phyre’s, is comparable to self-induced insomnia because it suppresses production of melatonin necessary to fall asleep, according to Bajkowski.

But Phyre wants to check TikTok, Instagram, BeReal, Twitter and Redditt nightly, since he doesn’t have time during the day when he’s napping or completing assignments. Sometimes he watches shows on Netflix, Hulu and HBO to wind down as well, averaging six hours of sleep each night — equal to his average of six hours spent on social media daily.

“Sometimes I have homework and sometimes I just want to stay up late,” Phyre said. “I’m not in the hardest classes that you can take, but my homework still takes a long time. Then I’ve also got probably ten different apps and shows that I want to and almost have to check out before I go to sleep.”

Junior Maya Brown* — who averages six hours of sleep — also reports scrolling through her phone in the darkness of her room. She started staying up late after homework and sports practices when she got her first phone in sixth grade and hasn’t stopped since. When she wakes up in the morning, caffeine doesn’t stop her eyelids from feeling heavy or the persistent humming in her chest. She needs something more, and so do the 35 out of 208 East students who admitted to using illegal substances to cope with being tired in an Instagram poll.

High school students who get less than eight hours of sleep per night are significantly more likely to use alcohol, smoke marijuana and become lifetime users of illegal drugs, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. Brown turned to weed to help her wind down at night during her sophomore year — something Bajkowski is strongly against.

“Maybe marijuana can make you fall asleep, but it’ll be less quality sleep,” Bajkowski said. “It’s not the solution to being tired, but there will always be people who build their own excuses to use it as a ‘solution.’”

Brown* believes smoking is the main coping mechanism keeping her calm and awake during the school day. That single hit of a cart in her car before heading to first hour makes her feel less shaky. The same hit at night calms her anxiety about school and friends and helps her fall asleep.

“Last year, I made some stupid decisions, like being high in chemistry class,” Brown* said. “Even when I would throw up in the bathroom between classes because of smoking, I just feel like it was the one thing that was getting me through the day. Still, I’ve been trying to stop these past few weeks.”

She can only think of one teacher at East who has ever noticed how tired she is in class. Bajkowski believes that schools should seriously reevaluate the physiological needs of students regarding sleep, even if it means moving start times.

“I’d say I’m an extreme case of sleep deprivation,” Brown* said. “But almost all of my friends and the majority of students I know at East are concerningly tired.”