Teenagers have a new excuse to hit the snooze button — as long as they don’t overdo it.
Getting up to two extra hours of shuteye on weekends may help teens feel less anxious, a new study found.
But if they sleep much longer than that, it could backfire, triggering more internal stress instead of relief.
“The results show that both sleeping less on weekends than weekdays and sleeping substantially more on weekends were associated with higher anxiety symptoms,” said lead researcher Sojeong Kim, a PhD candidate at the University of Oregon.
The sweet spot? Less than two hours of “catch-up” sleep — enough to ease anxiety without throwing their internal clock out of whack.
The study — based on data from nearly 1,900 adolescents ages 12 to 15 across the U.S. — used Fitbit trackers to measure sleep and the Child Behavior Checklist, a parent-report survey that evaluates emotional and behavioral problems, to assess mood symptoms.
Dr. Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation, told The Post that while letting teens sleep in by up to two hours can offer short-term relief, snoozing much longer than that risks triggering “social jetlag” — a disruption to their sleep cycle that makes it harder to fall asleep Sunday night and sets them up for a groggy school week.
Experts say the findings reflect a broader teen sleep crisis in the U.S.
“We have a dire epidemic of sleep deficits in young people,” said Dr. Rachel Widome, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. “Most adolescents do not get enough sleep on school nights.”
Only 23% of U.S. teens get the recommended 8 to 10 hours, according to the CDC. Most now average just six or seven — a drop tied to anxiety, chronic absences, poor decision-making and risky behavior.
Troxel said teens struggle to get enough sleep due to factors like increased caffeine intake, screen use and busy schedules — but called early school start times “one of the most significant barriers.”
Widome and Dr. Shelby Harris, a psychologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said shifting school start times to 8:30 — the minimum recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics — could help “combat” the crisis, adding that biological changes during puberty make early start times especially brutal.
“This study highlights the need overall for more sleep for our teens,” Harris told The Post. “Schools start far too early for the vast majority of them when their biology has a natural shift in their circadian rhythm to go to bed later and wake up later.”
The findings were published in an online version of the journal Sleep and presented at SLEEP 2025, an annual conference hosted by the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, a joint initiative of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society.
