Fatigue Countermeasure Laboratory @ NASA Ames

Child and teen sleep and pandemic-era school (2021)

Formost children and adolescents in the United States, routines of daily living have been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many daily activities, including sleep-wake cycles, have been impacted as restrictions altered daily schedules, schooling, and extracurricular activities. Schools largely shifted to virtual learning platforms almost overnight. These immense changes have had the potential for both positive and negative impacts on sleep patterns in children and adolescents. Because the 2020–2021 school year began during the pandemic,1 the context, locations, and timing of schooling have been worked out community by community across the country, and certainly not without debate and soul-searching by stakeholders. As sleep professionals, we examine the need to prioritize what science has shown regarding sleep in children and adolescents in the face of new educational schedules, which often involve distance learning or a “hybrid” combination of in-person and virtual classes.