The major bedtime mistake thats wreaking havoc on teens sleep and what to do instead

At night, your teen should sleep like a baby.They actually need more ZZZ’s than adults — up to 11 hours, compared to adults’ seven to nine hours— to support their rapidly developing brains and bodies.That’s why losing sleep night after night is more than a bad habit.It has major consequences as teens grow into young adults.Disrupted sleep in teens “can induce higher stress levels, more anxiety and even contribute to a depressed mood,” Dr.

Daniel Bigman, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and sleep medicine physician at Northwell Health, told The Post.Plus, “it can cause daytime sleepiness, lower motivation and even difficulty with impulse control or decision-making,” he added.“Every amount of sleep that’s lost is important because of these consequences.”New research shows that a habit most teens are guilty of makes it harder for them to catch that quality slumber: Staying up on their phones.Researchers from New York used a smartphone app and Fitbits to measure phone activity and sleep.They found that teens who spent more time on their phones late at night fell asleep later and got less sleep.For every 30 minutes on the phone after 10 p.m., teens fell asleep 26 minutes later, woke up 11 minutes later and got 12.9 minutes less sleep, compared to their usual sleep habits.Separate research found that more than half of American teens are on their phones for an hour or more between 10 p.m.

and 6 a.m.on school nights.Whether they used their phones directly before sleep also mattered.

Those who were on the phone in the five minutes before falling asleep had more disrupted sleep, especially during the first half hour.To be exact, they found that each additional minute on their phone (within five minutes of falling asleep) made them wake up for about a minute after they went to sleep.Teens were mostly on social media, including TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat, when they were supposed to be winding down for bed.They were on social media after 8 p.m.fo...