Short Wave - Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

A good night's sleep makes a big difference to our mental and physical health. Without quality sleep, we're less productive. Grumpy. It can even affect our hearts. Meanwhile, more and more people are having problems falling and staying asleep, including kids. So some parents are turning to a supplement called melatonin as a potential solution. But some experts worry that there isn't enough research about how regularly taking melatonin affects kids in the long term. Today on the show, we explore the research with Michael Schulson, who recently wrote about the topic for Undark. Want to hear more stories about human health? Email us and let us know at [e-mail] to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here. Okay, so possibly my favorite thing in the entire world is a good night's sleep. I mean, nothing makes a bigger difference to my mental and physical health. Without quality sleep, we're less productive, grumpy. It can even affect our hearts. And for kids, sleep is crucial for physical, mental, and emotional development. But there are a lot of things keeping us aware.

wake these days, screens, electronics, stress. Researchers say that, like adults, kids are having problems falling asleep and staying asleep. So more and more parents are turning to a supplement called melatonin as a possible solution. It's like so many parents dream, which is like, is this the answer? Is there this one gummy or this one thing that can help me get through this part of the day that can be really, really hard for parents and families? Shulson is a contributing editor at Undark Magazine, where he writes and edits stories about science. And he recently looked into why more and more people are using sleep supplements, especially with their kids. Melatonin is a hormone, and it's one that our bodies produce naturally.

It's part of the way that the body regulates its sleep cycles and gets you toward bedtime. Every night, the pineal gland in our brain releases a bit of melatonin. So when people take synthetic melatonin in the form of a pill or a gummy. It also can have that experience of helping people feel a little bit more tired, a little bit sleepy in ways that a lot of people find helpful for getting to sleep. Melatonin is widely considered, say, for adults in low doses, and for kids with certain neurological and neurodevelopmental conditions that get in the way of a good night's sleep. I think it's really important to understand that when families are seeking to help their

children get a better night's sleep. It's not just like an abstract health goal that they're trying to solve. They're often really speaking into very real challenges and very real problems that are affecting all parts of a family and are also really affecting their kids flourishing. But some experts worry that we don't know enough about how regularly taking melatonin affects kids in the long term. So today on the show, melatonin and kids. What the research says, how melatonin is being used, and how to navigate obstacles for getting kids enough seas. I'm Emily Kwong and you're listening to Shorewave, the science podcast from NPR.

Okay, so Michael, we are talking today about melatonin. It is a hormone that the human body naturally produces. But I want to hear more about the history of this supplement. This is synthetic melatonin that a lot of people have started taking and some people are giving it to their kids. When did people start taking melatonin? So you really start to see an uptick in people taking melatonin in the 1990s. And there's this funny way in which you both have a lot of marketing and interest in it and research sort of coming and saying it.

And at the same time, you have this moment when supplements are being deregulated in the United States, meaning Congress has gotten together and said, we're going to put a lot fewer restrictions on supplements and make it easier to sell things and make claims. You know, you could find these articles where people are like, whoa, melatonin is the new hot thing. What do we make of it? And there's anxiety around that. And there's excitement around that. And it begins to be more widely used. And that's mostly for adults. When did children start to use melatonin?

So a lot of the early news coverage or advertisements have something that says it's not for children. And then starting in the 2000s, that's, that kind of like the age floor begins to drop in this really interesting way. By the late 2000s, you start to see some news reports of parents using it. You start to see articles that are saying, well, maybe for like kids older than 10, this makes sense, but not for really small kids. And over time, that just kind of gets gradually lower and lower and lower. And even then, it's especially in the last few years that it seems to be that clinicians are reporting a real. uptick in use. Yeah. A lot of melatonin packaging is just very friendly looking. I mean, it's like these big bottles and the melatonin supplements

come in sometimes very yummy flavors. Sometimes they're gummies. So is it really being marketed to kids in a very deliberate way? I would say it's being marketed to parents in a very deliberate way. Yes. And it's the bottles, it's a lot of the language around saying melatonin

is safe and drug-free and non-habit-for. These are all terms that you hear coming up again and again in this marketing. Yeah. And I want to add here, a key distinction you make throughout this reporting is that melatonin is not a vitamin. It is a hormone. Why is that distinction so important?

So melatonin falls into this really weird in-between space, right? Where I think it's regulated as a supplement and a lot of people think about it as being harmless and natural. and it's also something that's a prescription drug in a lot of the world, right? And is very much a drug. And I think there's, like, legally it is not a drug. Legally, it is classed as a supplement, and so it's legal to say that it's not a drug. But I think that that can create this weird thing where people think about it as being maybe a little different than what how researchers and physicians describe it, which is they're like, it's a hormone.

It's a hormone you take in order to. change something in your sort of create a change in your body. And in that sense, it's certainly, even if it is not legally a drug, it certainly is kind of being used like a drug and is acting like a drug. Yeah. Let's talk about the research. So obviously there's not enough. But for what is available, what do sleep scientists have to say about kids taking

melatonin? Sure. So as you just said, one thing they always say is there's not. enough, which people say in almost every field it feels like... It's true. We don't really know. We'd love to know more. But I think that this really is an area where, and this is something I heard again and again in interviews, where there is a sense that there is very little research, especially on long-term

effects of melatonin. Okay. There's kind of two ways to break down what the science says, right? What is the science say about whether it works? And then what does the science say about whether it's safe? And in both cases, there's some uncertainty. In terms of what the science says about whether it works, the evidence that exists definitely suggests that, yes, it can help kids fall asleep a little bit earlier. Maybe not dramatically earlier, but something kind of on the order of around 20 minutes, maybe a little bit more on average.

And of course, that tracks with a lot of anecdotal evidence from parents who say it was, works. It helps. But there's also a question of whether children are actually better rested the next day. And there, again, there's actually some limited evidence. There's not really that much evidence either way, showing that children are actually better rested when they have taken melatonin versus they have not. No, melatonin is considered fairly safe and benign in terms of overdose potential. But if there are side effects to melatonin, what are they? This is, again, like, such a big question to unpack, right? But it's, there are reasons to say, okay, it's fairly safe. I want to be careful not to generalize that. But one of the big questions is about short-term and long-term side effects. In terms of short-term

side effects, they could definitely be there. The ones that are typically recorded on the scientific research tend to be pretty mild, but some researchers feel like that research hasn't been that comprehensive or rigorous, and that it's possible that there are kind of immediate or short-term side effects that people just haven't really done a good job of tracking. And then in terms of the long-term effects, right, of children who are taking melatonin maybe four or five or six or seven times a week for years on end, that's a really big open question. And I think some scientists look at that evidence and say, we see that it's helpful for families.

We don't see obvious signs of concern. and again, it can be really helpful for people, and it's worth doing it. It's worth, you know, in many cases it's still worthwhile. And then I think there are a lot of researchers who look at this and say, based on that unknown, we should be cautious. And the way that it's being used right now is many things, but it's not cautious, and that's a problem. Was melatonin ever supposed to be taken long term? Because it seems like it's, it was originally designed to be the sleep aid for a short-term situation. Yeah. So I think we should kind of divvy this up for children in different situations, right? So I think for children with some neurodevelopmental differences that can significantly affect their ability to sleep, autism in particular certain, yeah, certain manifestations of ADHD. I think there has been more of a willingness to say, look, these are children who are having, in some cases, a tremendous difficulty falling asleep. Not sleeping or not sleeping well can be, can be, you know, can have some really negative.

long-term effects, and it makes sense to perhaps use melatonin regularly in order to kind of, in order to do that, in order to be helpful. It might be beneficial to them. It might be beneficial. I think that the way that melatonin is used often right now, which is used regularly, used regularly often for neurotypical children who are perhaps sometimes taking the hormone a few times a week or every night with very little sort of supervision or implicit. put from a medical professional is something that very few people intend. And even the supplement

makers themselves will often include language to that effect on their bottles. But there's a real disjunct between kind of where that consensus is and how I think a lot of people are actually using melatonin. Okay. For all the desperate parents hanging on your every word, what do experts suggest for kids who have trouble sleeping, but they want to try other solutions? first. Yeah. And I want to be really clear that I am not telling families, like, don't use melatonin, or this is definitely dangerous. And I really don't want to be in any way sort of delivering that message. I think that parents have the right to know what debates among scientists look like and understand where there's uncertainty. And I also think that as parents, we're always having to

weigh tradeoffs. This is just a huge part of parenting. And lack of sleep is itself something that can be really hard on families, and this makes sense. Like, I, I, I don't want to suggest that this is a clear cut. Like, parents stop using melatonin. I think a lot of sleep experts, you know, perhaps predictably would say, talk to a sleep expert. And I think that one thing that they point out is that establishing good bedtime routines, doing things like avoiding screen time before, before bed, steps like that can be helpful. And I want to say, you know, I'm a parent who has implemented some of these behavioral interventions and still have, it deals with totally chaotic bedtimes with one of my children.

And so I don't want, I recognize that this doesn't always work, or it doesn't always feel like it's going to work, or it doesn't always sound realistic. Well, we want kids to have a good night's sleep, for sure. And we want parents to sleep, too. So Michael, thank you for dipping your toe in the melatonin research waters so that we all can get a good night's sleep. Thanks so much for having me on here.

This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez and fact check by Tyler Jones. Maggie Luthar was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, The Science Podcast from NPR.