Children and adolescents more severely affected by time change

At 2 o’clock in the morning this coming Sunday the clocks will go forward to 3 o’clock – from winter time to summer time. We will therefore “lose” an hour of our normal sleeping time. Many people don’t even notice this “mini jetlag.” However, children and adolescents should be prepared for this change, because they are the most severely affected by it. This was stressed by Gerhard Klösch, sleep researcher at MedUni Vienna’s Department of Neurology. This is partly due to the different physiology of young people and partly to the constant availability of digital devices such as mobiles, tablets or computers. Says Klösch: “Up to the age of 10 we need between ten and eleven hours of restorative sleep and, as adolescent, around nine hours. It’s only when we are older that seven hours sleep is enough.” Scientific studies have shown that the change-over to summer time effectively costs children and adolescents 32 minutes sleep – and this deficit can be repeated daily for a period of two weeks and thus accumulate.(more)