The sleeping account known amongst students under the handle of @ths_sleepy2025 on Instagram showcases numerous students slumped over desks, on the carpet floor, sleeping. It appears to occur anywhere, in classes, sports, buses and more.

Psychology teacher Chris Rich says that students sleep in class “fairly regularly,” and that “there’s generally gonna be someone sleeping almost every hour.”

What is making students so fatigued, and why can’t they fix it?
Students at Troy High School get varying hours of sleep each night. junior Olivia Wiseman says that she gets “about five to seven hours, usually five or six,”
However, junior Sanjay Murali Babu says he gets “around eight hours.”

Wiseman expresses that the reason leading to the evidently insufficient hours of sleep is “School. Just balancing work and sports and school. There’s not time for everything.”

Similarly, senior Ann Ducas, who gets roughly four hours of sleep every school night, comments, “It’s mainly the AP’s, and also I have pretty awful time management. So I’ll actually start to lock in at an astronomical time at night, like 10p.m. I’ll start getting to work. So I fall asleep at one.” She even adds, “I made my bed and now I have to lay in it. It’s a bed of nails. It’s not comfortable.”

As for the reasons why students are evidently falling asleep in school, it goes beyond simply not getting enough sleep.

“It just depends on the class period, how boring it is, what’s the vibe, or it depends on how late I was up,” Wiseman comments on the specific times she had fallen asleep before.

Rich expresses that it seems to be linked closely with the atmosphere of the classroom. A more quiet and calm environment is more prone for students to fall asleep than a rousing one; however, the level of exhaustion of the student also seems to matter. “If we’re doing something exciting, everyone’s gonna pay attention,” Rich says, “but at the same time, almost anything can be [boring] if you’re tired already, whether I’m showing a movie or whether I’m lecturing, whether we’re doing an activity, sometimes people are gonna fall asleep.”

Falling asleep in class commonly affects grade reports and academic performance, psychology teacher Kelly Forshey confirms, but not all the time. “You can definitely see the kids that are not even trying, not taking notes at all [be affected],” she says, “the kids that doze off but you can see that they’re trying, they’re usually okay.”

Murali Babu says that he “had much less productivity because [he] wasn’t paying attention, and [he] was sleeping in class,” after getting the least amount of sleep. However, he conversely expressed that generally falling asleep didn’t have an effect on class performance or grades as he fell asleep during a free day.

Wiseman discusses the “vicious cycle” of staying up late and falling asleep in class. She says, “It’ll help for the test, but overall, it just makes me tired in class, which makes me miss class, so I have to teach it on my own,” describing how going to sleep at three a.m. affected her outcomes at school.

Contrary to what many believe, “teenagers are actually needing more sleep than adults. Younger kids need more sleep than teenagers, but teenagers should be getting nine to 10, [for] adults, more like six or seven is doable,” Forshey details.

The circadian rhythm plays a big role in both causes and effects. It’s described by Forshey as “your natural 24-hour [cycle]. Sleep-wake cycle is one of them. So, our natural cycle tells us that when the sun goes down we should sleep, and when the sun comes up we should be awake. When you try to force that, which you do by staying up late with [your] phones, and which we do with jet lag and working nights, that messes people up.”

Similarly, Rich comments that sleep “[is] probably the number one thing that’s gonna help set your body clock,” and “[by] not getting the right amount of sleep, you can screw up your body clock and lead to all kinds of problems.”

As well as mentioning phones and homework, Forshey describes her view on why students are going to sleep late, how in teenage years, individuals’ circadian rhythms naturally change. “Your circadian rhythms are kind of shifted, so the teenage brain doesn’t really want you to go to sleep as early as 10 o’clock,” she says, “so you’re more likely to be night owls, but then you’re forced to get up in the morning.” This makes teenagers more likely to nap in the afternoon, making them go to sleep later, leading them to be tired and being more prone to nap, repetitively.

Sleep deprivation affects sleep stages as well; teenagers are “more likely when they do get sleep to go quickly through the non-REM stages, so they can get to REM, [rapid eye movement], which we need for memory formation, and we need for brain development,” Forshey says.

Not getting enough REM leads to REM rebound, where one experiences increased length and intensity of REM after being deprived of it, “so the next time you sleep, you get more REM so you’re not getting enough of those other non-REM stages.”

Normally, “if you’re getting eight hours of sleep, you should have more of that non-REM three in the first half of the night, which is your deep sleep. And then the last half of the night, you have more REM, which is where the memories and all of that take place,” Forshey states. However, when the hours of sleep get shortened to around four to five hours for example, “where they get cut short is the amount of REM that they get. They get more of the deep sleep that you needed,” Forshey says, “but you’ll miss out on REM.”

Additionally, getting inadequate sleep places non-REM stage three deep sleep towards the end of one’s sleep cycle, leading to possibly sleeping through alarms as opposed to if REM sleep were to be towards the end.

Cortisol levels, or stress hormones, are one of the aspects affected by deficiency of sleep; they can increase and lead to more branches of problems. “When you don’t get enough sleep, you have higher levels of cortisol,” Forshey explains, “so, you’re more stressed when you’re awake. And then the stress makes you more prone to sickness. And cortisol levels [that are too high] can actually stop your hippocampus from functioning, which affects memory.”

Memory, growth and attitude are just some aspects that sleep can affect. While students sacrifice sleep to aim for better outcomes, it may lead to opposite, unwanted results that may affect others around as well. “Irritability,” Rich says, “people that don’t get enough sleep tend to be more irritable. They’re difficult to be around. They have difficulty concentrating. I know test scores go down, alertness overall goes down. They’re more likely to make mistakes, get in car accidents.” As well as these short term effects, long term effects can include “develop[ing] heart disease.”

Immunity and metabolism can alter as well. “[Not getting enough sleep] lowers your immune system, you’re more prone to get sick, slows your metabolism, so you’re more prone to gain weight,” Forshey informs.

Additionally, “sleep is when a lot of our growth hormones are released,” Forshey says, “so when you’re younger and still growing, that can affect it if you’re sleep deprived.” As mentioned earlier, memory reformation and consolidation is a big part of REM sleep, “so [sleep] absolutely affects your brain and your memory and the way you think about everything.”

Different teachers have different opinions and responses to seeing their students fall asleep in class. “Some teachers get upset,” Wiseman says, “but a lot of them just let the lesson go on.”

Ducas expresses that her teacher was ambiguous toward situations alike, having said something along the lines of “I understand if you fall asleep once or twice. It’s just a problem if it’s every day.”

There are instances where teachers don’t notice students falling asleep. Rich says, “I would love to say that I catch [sleeping students] immediately. But [if] someone’s in the back row and they’re doing the head nods or something like that, I might not notice.”

Forshey reveals sympathy and understanding to some students, but not all. She explains, “It depends on the student. I think there are some days and some situations where I just know they’re up late and they have these tests and they’re not a kid that’s usually sleeping.”

Similarly, Rich describes his usual response, saying that he “sometimes just gently wake[s] people up and sometimes just let[s] people sleep” as he understands that “[students] have band, sports, [they’re] getting pulled in all different kinds of directions, and sometimes [they] just don’t get enough sleep.”

Additionally, he discerns concern about students or their schedules. He comments, “I might come to you personally and say, ‘hey, is there a reason you’re falling asleep all the time?’” if one is in that state all the time.

The question of solutions comes around. While sleep deprivation may seem unresolvable to some because of responsibilities, whether academic or outside of school, students seem to realize the detriments of outcomes if they continue to lack sleep. Ducas mentions that she hasn’t tried to change her sleep schedule, however, she says, “I know I should. [I know] it’s really bad to be staying up late. I know this has to be awful for my health, but I think it’s just my bad habits continuing, and it’s worked pretty well until now.”

Wiseman states that she has been attempting to improve her sleep schedule for approximately a month. “If I eat snacks during the day, it helps me keep my blood sugar up, wake me up a little bit more,” she says, “I still don’t really drink caffeine, but at night, after I get home from school, [I have] Starbucks or something with caffeine to keep me awake from the time I get home till the time I go to sleep.” She mentions that previously she’s had trouble falling asleep as a result of consuming caffeine, but “[she] started taking melatonin, which helped.”

While sleeping in school as well as exhaustion has become normalized, there are detrimental effects involving health that goes beyond grades and academic performance. It’s common to experience adversity in getting out of a habit, even one caused inevitably and naturally; however, it’s not impossible especially if starting in minuscule measures.

“You need sleep,” Forshey remarks, “tell them all, sleep.”