Parents and policymakers often point the finger directly at TikTok, late-night texting, and endless video game sessions when discussing why teenagers are constantly exhausted. However, a massive new national study reveals that the youth sleep crisis is much bigger than screen time.
Published as a Research Letter in JAMA, the study analysed data from 120,950 U.S. high school students between 2007 and 2023. While the research confirms that teen sleep deprivation is skyrocketing, it actively challenges the narrative that social media and gaming are the primary drivers of the recent surge.
The study found a steady and significant decline in adolescent sleep across all demographic groups. The percentage of students reporting “insufficient sleep” — defined as 7 hours or less per night — climbed from 68.9 per cent in 2007 to 76.8 per cent in 2023. Alarmingly, the percentage of students surviving on “very short sleep” (5 hours or less) spiked from 15.8 per cent to 23.0 per cent.
The screen time surprise
Researchers specifically looked at behavioural risk factors, expecting to see sleep loss disproportionately affecting students glued to their screens. The actual data told a different story.
While teens who spend 4 or more hours a day on social media and video games do experience high baseline levels of sleep deprivation, the rate of increase in sleep loss over the last 15 years was actually lower for these heavy screen users compared to teens who spent less time on devices.
Furthermore, the researchers found that insufficient sleep increased just as much, if not more, among students without behavioral risk factors as among those with them.
A structural crisis
“These findings show a broad increase in insufficient sleep across all demographic groups,” wrote researchers Dr. Tanner J. Bommersbach, Dr. Mark Olfson, and Dr. Taeho Greg Rhee.
Because the data shows sleep loss rising across the board regardless of a teenager’s electronic media use, physical activity, or substance habits, the authors concluded that “structural and environmental factors affecting most adolescents… are contributing to widespread sleep loss”.
This means targeted interventions — like simply telling teenagers to put their phones away or setting app limits — will likely fall short of solving the crisis. Instead, the researchers emphasise the need for population-level changes, explicitly pointing to later school start times as a proven structural solution associated with longer sleep and improved mental health.
