Short Wave - Teen sleep is getting wrecked by more than just phones

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

Teens aren’t getting enough sleep! And a two-decade study suggests it’s getting worse. Scientists found that the number of high schoolers getting insufficient sleep — less than seven hours a night — has increased from 69% to 77%. The throughline? There wasn’t one. Teens had bad sleep habits across most demographics, including race, gender and grade level. The findings were published this week in the journal JAMA.Interested in more science behind recent headlines? Email us your question at [e-mail] more about earthquake science – and the Cascadia Fault in particular – check out our recent episode on the Pacific Northwest’s Big One.Listen 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

Hey, Shorewavers, Regina Barber here. And Katie Riddle. And today we have our biweekly Science News Roundup featuring the hosts of all things considered. So here with Katie and I, this time is Scott Detrow. Hello. This is one of my favorite segments to do. I hear we are talking about the fact that apparently teens are still not sleeping enough. Yeah.

And new insights on a potential mega-thrust earthquake in the Pacific Northwest. And ancient recipes discovered in prehistoric pottery. All of that on this episode of Shortwave, the science podcast. from NPR. So Scott, where would you like to start? Regina, I feel like usually you're taking me deep out into the cosmos, but let's just start with like, you know, something much closer to home. Right, that teen in my house that doesn't talk to me?

The surly one who's apparently not getting enough sleep? Yes, yes. So researchers studied the sleep habits of high school students from 2007 to 2023, and they found that the number of teenagers getting insufficient sleep, that's less than seven hours a night is on the rise. Now it's more than three quarters of these high school students. These bad sleep habits were true across most demographics, races, genders, grades. And Scott, some of these kids are getting less than five hours of sleep a night. The results are in the medical journal JAMA. Any sense why this is happening? Well, the researchers tried to get at that.

This data is from the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey. This is a survey that more than 120,000 U.S. high schoolers take every two years, answering questions about health risk behaviors, like alcohol use, cannabis use, and sexual activity. Yeah, and lack of sleep seemed to be a problem across the study groups in teens with and without behavioral issues. Although the paper noted that the teens who reported depression or suicidal thoughts tended to sleep less than the others in the group. I can speak from experience because I shockingly got enough sleep last night, which does not always happen. I assume it is very bad to not get enough sleep. And I'm curious, like, What are pediatricians saying and quantifying this?

Like what specifically are they worried about? Yeah, I was wondering the same thing because I have a teenager in high school. So I reached out to a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital, Dr. Cora Colette Bruner. She didn't work on this study, but she thought this study was fascinating. She told me she'd seen the effects of insufficient sleep firsthand in her practice. She says that if teens don't get enough sleep, they're more depressed. They get in more car accidents. They do worse at school.

They don't get good jobs. They don't maintain relationships. they don't have happy and productive lives. None of that is good. That's bad. So next question then is like what specific suggestions do doctors have to try and turn this around on the individual level or the broader level? Well, the study authors say since insufficient sleep seems to be a problem plaguing most teens, there must be structural, environmental factors at play here. And they suggest broad interventions that could potentially reach most kids. For example, they point out that later school start times are linked to longer sleep and improve.

improve mental health. So interventions like that might help students across the board get better sleep. All right. Let's shift to the next topic. A mega thrust earthquake sounds kind of metal, sounds scary. Tell me more. It is scary, especially if you're a person like me who lives in the Pacific Northwest above the Cascadia Subduction Zone. That's a big fault. It's normal around here to keep a supply of earthquake, emergency things in your garage, like bottled water and batteries. Yeah, this is that big one I would always hear about growing up. And that fault, the The plates are pushing towards each other and moving closer at a rate of about an inch or more a year. Think of it like a slowly compressing spring that could eventually snap in a massive earthquake.

It seems like we are learning more about how that might unfold, though, if it does happen. That's right. Researchers at the University of Washington published a study in the journal Science Advances. They looked at the mechanics of the plates in the Cascadia fault. The challenge is the fault is beneath the seafloor. which makes it hard to access and to study. We talk about going to the moon and march, but the deep ocean is hard to get to, and it's right next to our coast.

That's Marine de Nol, one of the researchers who worked on this. She and her colleagues listened very closely to the Earth using sensors that are on the seafloor. These sensors measure tiny changes in seismic signals, and that gives us some idea of what's happening inside the fault. That data was gathered over a decade, and it gives us one of the most. nuanced pictures yet of the Cascadia Fault. They found that the northern part of the fault may be

more tightly locked and it's storing more stress, while the central section seems to allow more fluid movement along the Fault, which means an earthquake along the fault might unfold differently than they originally thought. So what does that mean for life and society on the surface then? Well, it's probably too early to tell. There's a lot of other factors to think about population density and proximity to the ocean, for example. We talked to another earthquake scientist, not involved in this study, Chris Goldfinger. He says that the potential for catastrophe because of this earthquake zone wasn't really understood until the mid-1980s. And these kinds of studies will help us better understand and prepare for earthquakes.

We just need more of them. All right, let's shift to our third and final topic, prehistoric diets. Yeah, I'm excited about this one because scientists know a lot about agricultural societies and like the way they used to eat back then, but not much about what hunter gatherers used to eat. And a new study in the journal, PLOS 1 takes a look at that. A group of scientists analyzed ancient pots from roughly 4,000 to 8,000 years ago. These pots were from all over Northern Europe, from what is now Denmark to Western Russia. And what they were looking at specifically was old food remains caked on the inside of these

ancient pots. I'm going to say, I feel I feel better that our ancient, ancient ancient ancestors were also not washing their dishes. But it's good for science because the researchers found food crusts left over from a whole bunch of ancient meals. But one of the ones they found the most interesting was a stew of fish mixed with gelder roseberries. These bright red berries are normally bitter, but they taste totally different. They have a totally different flavor once they're cooked. It's a dish that existed even in more recent European history. Crystal Dozier, an archaeologist at Wichita State University, says these berries are an example of how...

There's a lot of plants and even animals that we used to eat in the past as humans that have fallen out of our culinary traditions. And these kind of studies remind us that sometimes we need to look back to look forward. Case in point, Scott, people might even find these Gelder roseberries in their neighborhood if they live in the northern United States. They often are grown as decorative plants, but these berries are edible once you cook, them. Although, like, please listeners don't eat random berries unless you know what they are, like, for real. I'm wondering, though, did the scientists end up cooking any of these ancient

dishes themselves? They did. Oliver Craig, a senior author on the paper at the University of York, felt that while some of the dishes were a bit flavorless, he thought the berries were tasty. But he says, what people see as tasty changes massively, depending on the cultural context. So true. It brings me back to childhood. taste change minute to minute day to day. Yeah. And if you want to hear more about this Cascadia Fault earthquake, growing up we called it the big one. We did a whole episode on the science behind it.

We'll link to that in our show notes. And Scott, thank you so much for being on our show. Anytime. It is always super fun, and I learn a lot. Thank you. You can hear more of Scott on Consider This NPR's Afternoon podcast about what the news means for you. And for more science stories, just like this one, follow Shortwave on whatever app you're listening to. This episode was produced by George Marie Smith, Arun Nyer, and Burley McCoy.

It was edited by Christopher Antaliatta and Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Becky Brown and Jimmy Keely were the audio engineers. I'm Regina Barber. And I'm Katie A Riddle. Thank you so much for listening to Shorewave, the science podcast from NPR.