Dr. Wendy Troxel, a behavioral scientist and expert in sleep research, calls sleep deprivation among American teenagers “an epidemic,” with only one in ten getting the eight to ten hours of recommended sleep per night. Teenage brains are in a hyperspeed period of brain development, forming the very capacities we claim to be most important for learning—critical reasoning, problem solving, good judgment—and for those brains to grow healthy, teenagers need sleep. School days cannot start at 7 a.m. Homework should not gobble up hours upon hours of post-school time. Activities pursued in the name
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