FITeens Toolkit

45 It is well-recognised that sleep represents an essential element for health and well-being , including cognitive performance , physiological processes , emotion regulation , physical development , and quality of life . Appropriate sleep duration ranges vary throughout the lifespan. Regarding children and adolescents, according to the Panel convened by the National Sleep Foundation, the recommended sleep duration for school-age children (6-13 years old) is 9-11 hours, whereas 8-10 hours for teenagers (i.e., 14-17 years old) and 7-9 hours for young adults (18-25 years old) (Hirshkowitz et al., 2015). These recommendations for the amount of sleep for promoting optimal health in children and adolescents are in line with the consensus recommendations provided by the members of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (Paruthi et al., 2016). Despite of the sleep duration recommendations, it has been documented that because of social factors (e.g., academic requirements or electronic media) and biological characteristics (e.g., tendency towards delayed sleep phase coupled with fixed wake up time) 75% of high school students do not meet the recommended eight or more hours of sleep per night and suffer from sleep deficit (Kann et al. 2018). Inadequate duration of sleep among adolescents has been found to be associated