Sleep & Coronavirus: A Silver Lining In A Dark Cloud?
The coronavirus has upended almost all aspects of daily life for almost everyone. This is perhaps most strongly evident for the millions of school children who are now learning from home. And despite all of the upheaval and challenges that this brings, one unexpected positive result is that more children may be able to obtain the amount of sleep they need for optimal health and optimal learning. How could this be?
We have lots of evidence that school-age children need between 8-11 hours of sleep. This fact is affirmed by the National Sleep Foundation sleep recommendations.
| Age and condition | Sleep Needs |
| Newborns (0–3 months) | 14 to 17 hours |
| Infants (4–11 months) | 12 to 15 hours |
| Toddlers (1–2 years) | 11 to 14 hours |
| Preschoolers (3–4 years) | 10 to 13 hours |
| School-age children (5–12 years) | 9 to 11 hours |
| Teenagers (13–17 years) | 8 to 10 hours |
| Adults (18–64 years) | 7 to 9 hours |
| Older Adults (65 years and over) | 7 to 8 hours |
Children and teenagers who obtain the recommended amount of sleep have been shown to perform better academically, have better problem-solving skills, learn new skills more quickly and have fewer behavioral problems. We would expect that society would place a premium on seeing to it that our young learners have the best opportunity to achieve the sleep they need. Unfortunately, most studies say that they rarely do.
This chart shows that as adolescents age, their natural bedtime tends to get later. At the same time, their school start times tend to get earlier.
Source: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/2006_summary_of_findings.pdf
Add in other sleep challenges (like social media and technology) and we now have a culture where the vast majority of our young learners rarely obtain sufficient sleep.
Source: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/2006_summary_of_findings.pdf
How does the current pandemic provide an opportunity for restoring sleep as a priority for our children and teenagers? Because some children now may not have to arise extra early to get to school, they now may be able to sleep in until a more natural waking time, depending upon how distance-learning is being done. Adding even 20 minutes of sleep each day has been shown to be beneficial, and with most children being schooled at home for the foreseeable future, this is a great time for families to optimize the time in bed for all learners and all other family members.
At the same time, it is also a great time to look at all aspects of sleep. Scientists from the Well Living Lab, who studies the impact of the indoor environment on health, have these suggestions:
Keep the bedroom dark, cool and free of pets
Bedrooms should be quiet – but if outside noises intrude, consider a white noise mobile app.
If you are prone to allergies and symptoms interfere with sleep, consider a high-quality air purifier
Remove/turnoff all electronics with a screen at least one hour before bedtime
Take advantage of this challenging time to help re-prioritize sleep for your teenagers and other children. And if you don’t have any children living with you, it turns out that almost all of the same benefits of a good night’s sleep apply to adults as well. This is a great time for everyone to make sleep a priority.