FITeens Toolkit

46 with several health problems . In their systematic review of literature and meta-analysis, Chen et al. (2008) found that children with shorter sleep duration had a 58% higher risk of being overweight or obese , and children with shortest sleep duration had an even higher risk (92%) when compared with children having longer sleep duration. Moreover, for each hour increase in sleep, the risk of being overweight or obese was reduced on average by 9%. Similarly, short sleep was found to be associated with a greater risk of developing overweight or obesity in more than 3,000 middle childhood aged participants and more than 26,000 adolescent participants (Miller et al., 2018). Regarding the association between sleep duration and cardiovascular risk factors in children and adolescents, the review and meta-analysis by Sun et al. (2020) revealed strong evidence for an association between short sleep duration and increased blood pressure . In terms of the association between sleep duration and cognition in children and adolescents, results of the meta-analysis by Short et al. (2018) suggested that longer sleep duration measured objectively using actigraphy or polysomnography were associated with better cognitive functioning . Specifically, it was found that full/verbal IQ was positively and significantly associated with sleep duration, whereas fluid IQ, memory, executive function, processing speed, and attention came close to a significant association with sleep duration. It is well-known that teenagers are normally interested in trying new experiences that can be sometimes associated to risk-taking behaviours, such as tobacco, drug and alcohol use, risky driving, unprotected sex, gambling, and petty crime. Sleep loss is considered as one of the factors that may heighten risk-taking propensity among adolescents (Davis et al., 2013). In their literature review and meta-analysis, based on empirical evidence obtained from over 500,000 adolescents, Short and Weber (2018) showed an association between shorter sleep duration and risk-taking in adolescents across domains of risk-taking such as drug use,