“When you wake a teen up at 6 AM, it’s like waking an adult up at 3 AM.”

That’s Kari Oakes, a healthcare reporter and founding member of Start School Later. Today, she joins host Carousel Bayrd to talk about the science behind adolescent sleep rhythms and why experts agree that we’ve been starting school too early in the morning—and it needs to change.

They talk about the academic, mental health, and physical health benefits of allowing teens to sleep more at the times they need and how the simple policy change of starting school later “stands to globally improve school climate and school success.”

Kari Oakes is a pharmaceutical and healthcare reporter and policy analyst. She is a member of Start School Later and has been deeply involved in developing Sleep 101 (sleep101.info) and the Let’s Sleep! website (letssleep.org).

Read more about California’s newly implemented school start time law here.

Cover photo by Eder Pozo Pérez on Unsplash

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