It's past your bedtime, but does it matter anymore? How longitudinal changes in bedtime rules relate to adolescents’ sleep

Abstract

This study investigated how changing or maintaining parent-set bedtimes over time relates to adolescents’ sleep timing, latency, and duration. Adolescents (n = 2509; Mage = 12.6 [0.5] years; 47% m) self-reported their sleep patterns, and whether they had parent-set bedtimes on two separate occasions in 2019 (T1; 12.6 years) and 2020 (T2; 13.7 years). We identified four groups based on parent-set bedtimes: (1) bedtime rules at both T1 and T2 (46%, n = 1155), (2) no bedtime rules at T1 nor T2 (26%, n = 656), (3) bedtime rules at T1 but not T2 (19%, n = 472), (4) no bedtime rules at T1 but a parent-set bedtime at T2 (9%, n = 226). As expected, the entire sample showed that bedtimes generally became later and sleep duration shorter across adolescence, but the change differed among the groups. Adolescents whose parents introduced bedtime rules at T2 reported earlier bedtimes and longer sleep duration (~20 min) compared with adolescents with no bedtime rules at T2. Importantly, they no longer differed from adolescents who consistently had bedtimes across T1 and T2. There was no significant interaction for sleep latency, which declined at a similar rate for all groups. These results are the first to suggest that maintaining or re-introducing a parent-set bedtime may be possible and beneficial for adolescents’ sleep.