Teens and sleepiness feel like they're fairly synonymous. Preliminary results from a new study have shown, though, that adolescent girls are impacted more by tiredness than their male peers.
731 teens answered questions about sleep and their functioning during the daytime for the study. 311 of the participants were boys and 420 were girls, ranging in age from 13- to 17.5-years-old.
They responded to questions with the seven-point Likert scale, with 1 meaning that they never did something, and 7 indicating that they did it often.
The researchers found that teenage girls reported struggling more when it came to staying awake during morning classes, afternoon classes, and homework time than adolescent boys.
As well, girls were more likely to report missing school due to sleepiness, feeling too exhausted to do activities with friends, napping on the weekends, and lacking motivation in school due to insufficient sleep.
"What was most surprising is the fact that teenage girls reported a higher degree of interference of daytime sleepiness than teenage boys on multiple aspects of their school and personal activities," co-author Pascale Gaudreault told Science Daily.
She added, "These results suggest that teenage girls may be more vulnerable than teenage boys when it comes to the negative impacts of adolescence's sleep changes."
There was, however, no gender difference when it came to coffee or energy drink consumption to stave off daytime tiredness or falling asleep during school.
The researchers' results were presented on Tuesday in Baltimore at SLEEP 2018, which is the 32nd annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS). As well, the journal Sleep recently published the study's abstract in their online supplement.
