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Sleep Europe 2026 | How can schools and health services support adolescent sleep?
Gabriel Hinnen, PhD(c), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, discusses how schools and health services can support adolescent sleep. He explains that, as adolescents are naturally night owls, delaying school start times by even 30 minutes to 1 hour could alleviate many sleep problems. He also highlights the need for sleep education in schools, such as dedicated sleep health days, as many adolescents see sleep as secondary. In addition, he calls for more funding for school-based interventional studies. This interview took place at Sleep Europe 2026 in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
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Transcript
That’s of course a very important topic, societally. So I think one thing on which most of sleep researchers agree now is to delay school start times. It’s one of the most important things I think because adolescents are night owls; they tend to go to sleep very late and it’s very hard to go against this natural chronotype, and if they have to wake up extremely early to go to school very early as well...
That’s of course a very important topic, societally. So I think one thing on which most of sleep researchers agree now is to delay school start times. It’s one of the most important things I think because adolescents are night owls; they tend to go to sleep very late and it’s very hard to go against this natural chronotype, and if they have to wake up extremely early to go to school very early as well. Mathematically, it will induce a sleep deprivation situation. So, just advancing school start times, even by 30 minutes, one hour, would, I think, alleviate a lot of adolescent sleep problems. Of course, it would not be a universal solution, but it will help a lot. And the second thing I think that is really important is about giving adolescents, giving young people in general, the possibility to take care of their sleep more, so that it’s really in the educational programs, just like there can be days for sexual prevention, just like there can be special days dedicated to driving lessons or security in driving. I think that it would be essential to have a sleep-taking-care day, or at least a day where you can have professional researchers come and explain the importance of sleep, because one thing that we noticed in our study is that most adolescents don’t really care about their sleep nowadays, and they think that it’s a secondary thing, and they want to have a lot of autonomy during the night, they want to spend as much time as possible in the evening awake, so that they can network with their peers, etc. So I think that working on how adolescents perceive the importance of sleep is essential, and I think that, in terms of education, it must be implemented, maybe in biology classes, or in special days dedicated to sleep hygiene, sleep health, yeah, it would be very nice. And of course, like giving more funding to interventional studies that go into schools and see the situation in schools, and try to recruit adolescents that want to have better sleep, is also essential, because then it gives, of course, tangible and objective data on which to rely. So yeah, I would say that.
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