Teenagers who don’t get enough sleep may be at an increased risk of engaging in unsafe sexual behaviors, such as not using condoms or having sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs, according to new research.
«Teens by and large are not getting the recommended eight to 10 hours of sleep a night, due to a number of reasons, including biological changes in circadian rhythms, early school start times, balancing school and extracurricular activities and peer social pressures» said Wendy M. Troxel, PhD, a RAND Corporation senior behavioral and social scientist and lead author of the study published in the journal Health Psychology. «Insufficient sleep may increase the potential for sexual risk-taking by compromising decision-making and influencing impulsivity.»
Troxel and her co-authors, all from RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution, analyzed data from a large, long-term study of 1,850 racially and ethnically diverse adolescents and young adults in Southern California. The data were collected four times between 2013 and 2017. Participants were, on average, 16 years old in 2013 and 19 years old in 2017.
The teens reported their sleep schedules on weekdays and weekends and whether they had trouble sleeping in the four weeks prior to filling out the survey. The participants also reported whether they used alcohol, marijuana or other drugs right before or during sexual activity and whether they used condoms.
The teens were grouped based on their sleep patterns over the four-year period, including weekday sleep duration, weekend sleep duration, differences in sleep patterns between weekdays and weekends, and sleep quality.
The majority of teens were classified as intermediate weekday sleepers, who got an average of 7.5 hours of sleep per school night, which is below the recommended sleep duration for this age group. There was also a group of teens, called short weekday sleepers, who got well below the recommended sleep duration, with 6.35 hours per school night. Only 26% of teens could be classified as sufficient weekday sleepers, averaging about 8.5 hours per night, according to Troxel.
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