Effects of earlier bedtimes on sleep duration, sleep complaints and psychological functioning in adolescents: It’s high time you went to bed!

Abstract

Background: To investigate the association between bedtimes, sleep duration, sleep complaints and psychological functioning, we assessed early, middle and late adolescents who attended boarding schools with the same school schedules. Moreover, we studied whether particularly evening types benefit from set bedtimes. Methods: A total of 1571 adolescents (age range = 11 to 21 years; mean age = 16.51 years ± 1.83; 55 females) attending boarding schools in German-speaking Switzerland were assessed. Adolescents who slept at the boarding schools (n = 1013, 64; INTERNS) were compared with adolescents attending the same schools but who slept at home (n = 558, 36; EXTERNS). INTERNS’ regular bedtimes were supervised by school staff, whereas EXTERNS had variable bedtimes. Participants were split into early, middle and late adolescents and morning and evening types. Participants completed questionnaires covering sociodemographic information, sleep-related information, chronotype and psychological functioning. Results: Irrespective of attending boarding school full time or living at home, older adolescents reported shorter sleep duration compared to younger adolescents. INTERNS, early, middle and late adolescents reported more sleep complaints and more psychological issues than EXTERNS. Under supervised conditions, particularly older adolescents and evening types reported longer sleep duration but did not report less sleep complaints or more favourable psychological functioning. Conclusion: Within a larger sample of adolescents attending boarding schools, longer sleep duration was found among full-board students with supervised set bedtimes, particularly for older adolescents who are evening types. In general, adolescents with earlier set bedtimes reported longer sleep duration, but did not report less sleep complaints or more favourable psychological functioning. © 2019, Springer Medizin Verlag GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature.