Sleep plays an important role in optimizing a student's academic performance and is a great factor that determines the proper function of a student during a daily basis. Although sleep is very important in everyone's lives, students are the ones who are most likely to suffer from sleep deprivation. It has been proven and is very obvious that sleep deprivation can influence and affect anyone's mood, health or performance, a student's ability to pay attention in class, productivity level during the day and in the long run, may even affect students" academic scores and achievements. Strangely enough, most students who stay up late are studying to get good grades.
Sleep deprivation is sometimes caused by sleep disorders but sleep disorders are also the result of lack of sleep, which one cannot help if diagnosed with a sleep disorder. Students from ages 15 to 25, more than any other age group, are more likely to experience sleep deprivation because of the certain pressures that school can bring upon them, especially at higher levels of academic learning. Therefore, students feel they must stay up late to study or do something productive. In addition, a teenager's biological clock is much different from an adult or a child. A teenager's body, naturally, wants to go to sleep late and wake up late. However, most teenagers do not follow their natural biological clock and they go to sleep late, as their body tells them to, but is forced to get up early to go to school. For teenagers to fully function properly they need at least 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep each night but because they biologically want to sleep at 11 to 12 o"clock and have to wake up at 7 or 8 o"clock to get to school on time, most students only get 7 hours and 15 minutes. Although 8 hours of sleep allows anyone to reasonably function during the day most students who get this much of sleep are thinking about sleep and feeling sleepy throughout the day thinking they could have used just a little bit more sleep, which is a sign of sleep deprivation.