Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 It can be hard to get scientists to
agree on things. But these days there is consensus that kids
these days are not getting enough sleep, and a recent paper
confirms this. Researchers reviewed published data on sleep
duration for 5-18 year olds, gathered between 1905 and 2008. The
published papers represented data from 690,747 youth drawn from
20 countries. They found a notable and systematic decline in
average number of hours of sleep over this 103 year period. The
net result is that children today sleep, on average, 1 hour less
per night. This pattern was especially true for youth in the US,
Europe, Canada, and Asia. It’s important to keep in mind that
while 1 hour per night may not sound like a lot, this adds up to
a lot of sleep loss over days, weeks, months, and years — all of
which can take a toll on the body, especially in childhood and
adolescence. There are certainly individual differences in sleep
— some kids need more, some can get by with less. A good start
point for par