STUDENT’S NAME WITHHELD BY REQUEST
English 9/Mr. Davis
Los Alamos High School
Editor’s note: Each year, the Los Alamos Reporter publishes a series of op-eds written by students in Adam Davis’s 9th grade English class to highlight the students’ writing. This is one of those op-eds.
How does homework hurt teens’ mental health? That is a question I have been asking myself, everyday I go through the full school day, go home, and do 1-2 hours of homework. Most kids do this every day, and it’s exhausting. Some people say that we need to practice more than once to understand things, and although this is true, having an hour of homework per class that has homework, can really add up. And yet we are also expected to get 7-8 hours of sleep, this leaves no time for chores, or dinner, or extracurriculars. Most teens bypass this by just getting less sleep, which results in the next day being harder to focus, and we have to do it all again.
Some people may make the case that teens need to practice outside of school and build their time management skills. However, I believe that this is putting too much stress on teens. As Leona Breitenstein put it “Teachers expect students to spend approximately 1-2 hours per night on homework; however, they typically spend anywhere from 2-6 hours.”.
This starts to cause problems, because kids spend around 7.5 hours in school, including getting there and back, and up to 6 hours doing homework. That adds up to 13.5 hours, including about 45 minutes spent eating and including thirty minutes for the chores they have to do, leaving about 10 hours for other things. The problem comes with extracurriculars, these take up a good part of their remaining time, but in order to keep up grades, they need 7-8 hours of sleep. With all of this there isn’t enough time, so something has to be sacrificed, usually sleep.
Recently there has been a rise in mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and excessive sleepiness. Some of the effects of sleep deprivation are exactly that, depression and anxiety and excessive sleepiness. I believe that these two are connected, with teenagers’ busy schedules, they sometimes don’t have enough time for everything and end up sacrificing sleep. This could be the root cause of the classic “tired teenagers” that are often portrayed in the media, like Keria Van der Molen said “If a student is sleep-deprived from staying up late to complete homework, then their body is weak and not energized for a day of learning at school.”. Sleep deprivation has other, physical effects on the body, for example, more frequent headaches, poor balance, frequent illness, and reduced motor skills.
In the end, it seems that homework can lead to sleep deprivation in teens in an attempt for them to finish their homework. This can cause a plethora of health issues, both mental and physical, including headaches, anxiety, depression, and frequent illness. So I ask you, does homework have a bad effect on teenagers’ health?
Works Cited
Breitenstein, Leona. “Homework Takes a Toll on Students’ Physical & Mental Health.” The Scituation, 3rd June 2023, https://www.scituation.net/opinions/2023/06/03/homework-takes-a-toll-on-students-physical-mental-health/. Accessed 12th December 2024.
Molen, Keira van der. “Ease homework overload to improve student mental health.” The Pearl Post, 29 March 2022, https://www.thepearlpost.com/27877/showcase/ease-homework-overload-to-improve-student-mental-health/. Accessed 12 December 2024.
Sweet, Kim. “Help kid’s mental health through their schools.” Daily news, 27 February 2023, https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/02/27/help-kids-mental-health-through-their-schools/. Accessed 12 December 2024.