Sleepless in Singapore By Jessica Jaganathan

Publisher:The Straits Times - Publication Date: 15-06-2007


Activities like watching TV and chatting online have greatly cut into teens' sleeping time
It might have been common knowledge before, but is backed by official statistics now: Teenagers are not getting enough sleep.
A poll conducted on 940 students in 26 secondary schools has revealed that 80 per cent of them are getting less than eight hours of sleep on school days, while only 2.6 per cent are getting the recommended nine hours.
"I already knew that teenagers were not getting enough sleep, but these findings are a lot worse than I expected," said Dr Lim Li Ling, medical director and consultant neurologist at the Singapore Neurology and Sleep Centre, the principle organiser of the Teen Sleep Survey Singapore 2007.
It all started with a group of five students from Raffles Girls' School who carried out a mini sleep quiz in their school in June last year.
Realising that many of their school mates did not sleep well, they organised a Sleep Awareness Week, during which they publicised various facts about sleep and offered tips on how to to get a good night's sleep.
"In classes like PE and home economics in school, we learn to eat and exercise properly, but we hardly learn about sleep," said the group leader of the sleep team, Victoria Leong Yee Ying, 16.
When they approached Dr Lim for help in creating awareness about the importance of sleep, they became part of the effort to see if the common belief that teenagers do not get enough sleep was true.
The survey was approved by the Ministry of Education and several local institutional review boards. In order to compare how our teenagers fared to those in the United States, the survey was modelled on the National Sleep In America polls.
The result: The situation here is much worse. About 9 per cent of American teenagers (aged 14 to 17) got nine or more hours of sleep, compared to 2.6 per cent here.
Roxanne Alyssa Wong, a Secondary 2 student in CHIJ Toa Payoh, gets about seven hours of sleep every day on school nights. "Sometimes I get so sleepy in school, especially during Maths lessons," she said.
A teacher at Victoria Junior College, who did not want to be named, said she had one case of a student who had not slept in 24 hours because of a combination of soccer training, assignments and finishing up a project at the last minute.
"How alert will such a student be and how much can she really learn?" lamented the teacher.
In Singapore, the importance of sleep is not well-appreciated. Parents who acknowledged that their teenage children were not getting enough sleep, are also unsure about what to do about it.
"I nag at them every day to go to bed early as I'm concerned they will fall sick," said Ms Low Soo Hwa, a mother of two teenagers.
Said Ms Lau Ca Cheng, a mother of three teenagers: "I'm nocturnal, so my children tend to follow my habits. Even if I want them to sleep early, they can't, unless they get really tired and conk out."
Another parent was not very concerned about her 14-year-old's late hours. "There is not enough time to do everything she wants to do. As long as she is not tired or crabby, and if she maintains her grades, it is okay," said Valerie Choong-Wong.
An adolescent's sleep phase tends to be a bit delayed, said Dr Lim. This means it is natural for teenagers to sleep later and wake up later. "So even if you make them go to bed earlier, they will not be able to sleep."
Westwood Secondary School teacher Ramesh Sivagnanam noted that students can lock themselves in the room and pretend to sleep. "Parents have to make sure they really sleep, or at least take a nap in the afternoon," he said.
In the US, the problem was tackled by having a delayed school start time across the country. But this solution does not seem to be a popular choice among Singaporeans.
At the end of last year, Anderson Secondary School explored the idea of delaying school start time. But an overwhelming two-thirds of the school's 1,420 students and about 100 staff voted against it.
"Some students did not want to lose their CCA time, and parents did not want to be caught in a jam when they took the kids to school," said principal Tham Mun See.
The survey showed that 66.5 per cent of the students were up late doing homework or studying. Other late-night activities include watching television, surfing the Internet or chatting online.
Dr Lim suggests that teenagers should do less of these activities and go to bed at least an hour earlier than what they are used to.
But if both parents and teenagers themselves do not see the problem with their sleep habits, what is all the fuss about?
"It is especially important for children and adolescents, who are still developing," said Dr Lim. "Growth hormones are secreted during sleep, so if that amount of sleep is curtailed, it can affect the hormonal development and intellectual function."
Signs of not getting enough sleep include the need to wake up with the help of an alarm clock instead of naturally, feeling very sleepy in the middle of the day, feeling the need to take a nap and sleeping in for a long time on weekends, she added.
She also stressed the importance of catching up on lost sleep during the weekend. "Every hour lost on each school night should be added up and one-third of this sleep debt should be repaid on weekends," she said. "Sleeping in a little longer on the weekends is the body's way of catching up."