With so many teenagers dependent on their smartphone, it is hard to turn it off. Even when it is time to go to sleep.

One such student is Ernesto Harwell. The sophomore would much rather stay up with his cell phone than go to bed counting sheep. In preparation for his late night shenanigans, he sleeps for the most part during the day, almost as soon as he gets home from school.

Once he wakes up, around 7 at night, his mind goes to activities that entertain him rather than those he feels he is obligated to do. “I procrastinate a lot,” he says. “I can’t help it, I (want to) do something fun; not homework.”

From various social media sites, text messages, YouTube videos and video games, teenagers are exposed to a high concentration of blue light.

Blue light especially, but any light for that matter, suppresses the production of melatonin, which is a light-sensitive hormone.

Melatonin promotes sleep and acts as a sort of biological clock, signaling the time of day by how much light exposure there is. This hormone is produced during the evening and during the night, but production can easily be disrupted by using an electronic device such as a cell phone around bedtime.
Typically, teenagers are going through extreme hormonal fluctuations and already begin producing melatonin much later than others, at around 11 p.m. or later. Because of this, it is not unusual for teens to be extremely sleep deprived but rather the opposite.

Currently, less than 8 percent of American high school students are getting enough sleep.
Not receiving enough sleep can lead teens to sleep excessively on the weekends, further disrupting their sleep schedules and inducing a permanent jet lag.

Harwell finds he is extremely susceptible to electronic distractions such as his cell phone and finds his cellular device even more desirable when someone else is trying to contact him. “If no one is texting me, I’ll go to bed.” Harwell normally goes back to sleep at around 5 in the morning and wakes up at around 6:50 a.m., barely enough time to get ready for school.

Despite this sleep deprivation epidemic, Junior Alejandro Figueroa finds sleep is of much more importance to him than to his peers.

Unlike Harwell, Figueroa must fall asleep before the time his body naturally would, 11 p.m., as he wakes up at around 6:30 a.m. in order to get to school on time. When he does not get enough sleep, he feels groggy and disoriented all day. The side effects that one experiences when sleep deprived are similar if not identical to the impairments that drinking around three to four beers has on people.
This places a huge risk on drivers who think they are not doing any harm by driving while exhausted or fueled by excessive amounts of caffeine.

Figueroa explicitly remembers a time when he did not sleep at all, describing it as one of the worst days of his life.

That day he did not bring anything but his skateboard as that is his transportation to school. He fell asleep in most of his classes as well as during wrestling practice. Despite his deep need for sleep, Figueroa would go without it if he could.