Sleep-Deprived Teens More Likely to Engage in Delinquent Behaviours

Lisa Franchi November 29, 2013

Teens who don’t get enough quality sleep are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviours as lack of sleep significantly affects their self-control – a new study found.

Researchers from the Florida International University found a link between sleep deprivation and low self-control, as well as an association between low self-control and delinquency.

The long-term study involved 825 teens who were followed from birth to age 15, of which half are female, 82 per cent were non-Hispanic white, and 59 per cent came from a two-parent family. The researchers specifically looked at potential factors that could influence delinquency, such as neighbourhood context, parenting practices, depressive symptoms and socialization with peers. They found that even after taking into account these factors, sleep deprivation directly correlated with low self-control.

"Sleep offers us the opportunity for recuperation and restoration, which is especially important for developmental processes in children and adolescents. But even though sleep occupies roughly a third of our time, we are only now beginning to understand its function and the role it plays in antisocial behaviour." said Ryan C. Meldrum, a criminal justice researcher at the university.

This is not the first time that sleep has been shown to impact impulsive behaviour. Christopher M. Barnes, an assistant professor of management at the University of Washington, recently studied the effects of sleep on self-control. He and his colleagues found that self-control is replenished while a person sleeps. One reason is that self-control needs blood glucose as a fuel, particularly in the pre-frontal cortex – the part of the brain responsible for generating self-control. Their findings suggest that to get better self-control, people need to have at 7-9 hours of shut-eye at night. Researchers also found that losing as little as two hours could lead to deviant behaviour at work the next day due to significant effects on self-control.

The current study was published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Source of this article:

Poor Sleep Linked With Delinquency In Teens