If I had a nickel for every time a well-meaning adult suggested that we could solve the adolescent sleep crisis by simply “taking away the phones,” I’d have enough to fund a national transition to healthy school start times myself.
A new JAMA study recently confirmed what we’ve long suspected: the percentage of U.S. high schoolers getting inadequate shut-eye is skyrocketing, with a staggering 77 percent of students regularly failing to get enough sleep in 2023. Even more concerningly, 23% report getting 5 or fewer hours per night. Predictably, the conversation often drifts toward “individual behaviors”—the midnight TikTok scrolls, the caffeine, the supposed “rebelliousness” of the modern teenager.
But as Amy Wolfson and I explain in our upcoming book, focusing on screens isn’t just an oversimplification; it’s a form of victim-blaming that ignores the structural walls we’ve built that make healthy sleep impossible for most students, regardless of character or behavior.
The Comfort of Individual Blame
Why are we so compelled to burden teenagers with the responsibility of “fixing” their own biology? It’s easier to tell a kid to put down the phone than it is to admit that our societal infrastructure—specifically early school start times—is fundamentally at odds with adolescent biology. It also gives us a false sense of personal control.
We see it in school board meetings and the “cesspool” of social media comments:
“Just throw ice water on them!”
“Put them to bed earlier. Problem solved.”
“It’s those damn phones.”
These quips reflect a deep-seated disdain for teenagers. They imply that sleep deprivation is a character flaw—a product of lazy kids or irresponsible parenting—rather than a predictable biological response to a systemic mandate.
The Evidence Problem
Here is the reality: while “sleep hygiene” and limiting blue light are theoretically compelling, there is remarkably little evidence that individual-level interventions to limit them work sustainably across an entire population.
We still don’t even know the directionality of the “screen” issue. Do phones keep teens awake, or do teens reach for phones because their circadian rhythms (and the stress of midnight homework deadlines) won’t let them sleep?
More importantly, there is zero evidence that reducing screen time will magically grant a student more sleep if they still have to be at a desk by 7:15 a.m. You cannot “sleep hygiene” your way out of a structural deficit.
Remediable vs. Reachable
When we look at the roots of this crisis, we see a spectrum of challenges:
1. The Immutable: Adolescent biology (the puberty-driven “phase delay”) and the existence of electric light.
2. The Systemic but Unstudied: Late-night sports, play practices, and study sessions, and “midnight” digital homework deadlines.
3. The Only Proven Lever: School start times.
What distinguishes school start times from every other culprit—including screens—is a massive, consistent body of evidence proving two things: school start times have a systemic impact on sleep, and delaying them is a feasible and effective countermeasure at the population level.
Shifting the Burden
If we want our teens to thrive, we have to stop asking them to perform the impossible task of outrunning their own biology while we hold the starting gun.
We need to stop focusing on the “ice water” solutions and start focusing on the structural ones. It’s time to move past the “take away the phone” rhetoric and address the one factor we know we can change: the school bell.
Thank you for this! As a sleep doctor, I’ve had teens tell me they go on their phones when they can’t sleep because they have gone to bed too early because of early start times