Teens can fight social stress with good sleep.

Teens Can Fight Social Stress with Good Sleep

Social stress occurring from ethnic or racial bias in teen students can be faced with having adequate sleep. This confirmed new research. Proper sleep allows them to solve problems effectively and to seek peer support when they are facing hard times. 

From keeping awake in the class to cope with the social challenges, teens have to go through a long way. The recent study by the experts from Michigan State University confirms that good night's sleep can help teen students to deal with the whole stack of tasks.  

The research team completed the study on several students of ninth grade. Adequate sleep ignited their ability to cope with social challenges and discrimination. Further, their capacity for problem-solving and seeking peer support increased. 

Yijie Wang says, "Findings of this study have important implications. Understanding how sleep helps adolescents negotiate social challenges may consequently elucidate how promoting sleep may improve adolescent adjustment during high school and beyond." She is an assistant professor of human development and family studies at MSU. 

The study report has been published in the journal Child Development. The study is a fruitful one as it identifies the timing of sleeping and how this helps the teens to deal with their stress. 

The daily activities of adolescents are very different from adults and children. They need to get up early for school, stay busy all day and face increased social stressors. When they shift to high school, the range of diversified activities increases as they get introduced to new social environments and relationships.  

Tiffany Yip is a co-author of the study. She works at Fordham University as a professor of the psychology department. Wang and Yip researched to find out whether sleep has any effect of dealing with discrimination or not. Their search shows that good sleep does help teens to cope with bad experiences like discrimination.  

Wang did not consider sleep as a consequence of discrimination. The study does not establish them in that way. The team focused on how discrimination influences adolescents' sleep. According to the researchers, teens who experience discrimination, whether to be ethnic or racial in the daytime, they also need more time to get sleepy and even slept less.  

The team added an actigraphy watch with every participant to see what is happening within the body in one-minute intervals. The watch also determined their state of sleep-wake every day for two weeks. Before sleep, the participants had to answer a query to survey the entire course. The team asked them if they faced any ethnic or racial discrimination, what was their response to figure out their stress and psychological well-being.  

Teenagers rely on their peers than their parents is a surprising finding of the study. When they need support to stand against discrimination, peer support helps them a lot. 

Wang goes on saying that "Compared to parents, peers are likely to be witnessing and involved in adolescents' experiences of ethnic or racial discrimination daily. As such, they're more of immediate support that backs up adolescents and comforts them when discrimination occurs."

Peer understanding is suitable for adolescents, but parents also have their role for their children. They can help them deal with social situations and sleep, as well. Besides ensuring eight-hour sleep, the parents should be careful about what their children get quality sleep. For this, they can fix a regular bedtime, disallow them to use media in bed, and ensure a calm and comfortable sleep environment.

It is hard to form a good sleep habit during teenage said Wang. But the practice can make adolescents ready for the challenges in school and life the next day.  

Wang says, "The promotive effect of sleep is so consistent. It reduces how much adolescents ruminate, it promotes their problem solving, and it also helps them to better seek support from their peers."