If you have a teenager, you’ve probably had at least one moment of lying awake wondering whether their sleep is “okay.” Late nights, long lie-ins, phones glued to hands, mood swings, school mornings that feel like warfare.
It’s easy to point the finger at social media. Sometimes it plays a role. But sleep in teenagers is rarely about one thing, and it’s rarely fixed by one rule.
Teenage sleep is different – by design
Adolescence shifts the body clock later. Many teenagers naturally feel more awake at night and less functional early in the morning. That isn’t laziness or bad habits.
The problem is that early school start times don’t shift with them. So many teenagers are living slightly out of sync with their internal clock for years.
Focusing too much on “how many hours” they should get often adds pressure and anxiety. Sleep works better when we look at patterns, timing and how settled the system feels overall.
Where social media fits in
Phones can affect sleep, but not perhaps the way we think.
They bring stimulation, social pressure, and a constant stream of new information. The brain stays in “engage and respond” mode when it actually needs to drift and disengage.
That doesn’t mean every teen with a phone will sleep badly, or that banning devices fixes sleep. Often it just moves the tension elsewhere.
What tends to help in real life
Protect the morning anchor
A reasonably consistent wake time on school days matters more than a perfect bedtime. It keeps the body clock steady, even when nights vary. Weekend will likely look different but a steady rhythm still matters – so try and make sure that even if it’s different to the week day, the wake time is still consistent for all the weekend days too. Any rhythm is better than no rhythm.
Watch overload, not just screens
Overscheduling, heavy homework, sports, and social pressure all activate the nervous system. Sometimes reducing commitments does more for sleep than removing a phone.
Encourage wind-down that isn’t about input
Wind-down works best when it reduces new information. Quiet music, showering, doodling, chatting, or just pottering are different from scrolling and reacting. Stop forcing teenagers to go to bed at really early times – let them spend time winding down and should they need to go to bed later, at least they had quality rest in the meantime.
Allow recovery without panic
Some late nights are normal. Some tired days are part of being a teenager. Not every wobble needs fixing.
The bigger picture
If a teenager is persistently exhausted, highly anxious, or struggling to function, it’s worth looking at their overall stress load and sleep patterns rather than blaming a single cause or focusing wholly on sleep duration (merely spending more time in bed often makes it worse not better). It’s about patterns and consistently over time.
Good sleep in teenagers usually comes from a system that feels safe, understood and not under constant pressure to be perfect.
Parents don’t need to control sleep for it to improve. Often, reducing fear around it is the most powerful step.
