The Society of Sleep Medicine yesterday said its survey this year of the sleeping habits of adolescents showed that 24 percent of respondents have experienced insomnia, adding that insufficient sleep can affect grades.
The survey, which was conducted in January with responses from 506 junior-high and senior-high school students, showed that adolescents spend an average of 7.12 hours sleeping on nights before school days and 9.26 hours on nights before weekend days, with senior-high school students sleeping less than junior-high school students on average because of greater academic stress.
Huang Yen-lin (黃彥霖), a clinical psychologist at Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s Sleep Center, who helped conduct the survey, said it determined insomnia rates by asking whether respondents were unable to fall asleep after being in bed for 30 minutes or unable to fall asleep after waking up to go to the bathroom.
Among the respondents who reported sleeping less than seven hours per night, 63.5 percent were often late for class and 75.5 percent said they have fallen asleep in class, Huang said, adding that insufficient sleep can affect gades.
About 55 percent of those who reported sleeping more than seven hours per night had grades in the top one-third of their class, while the adolescents whose grades ranked toward the bottom showed a higher rate of insomnia, he added.
The survey showed that adolescents living in the greater Taipei area and Keelung have higher rates of insomnia and on average went to sleep later.
Huang said parents might arrange extracurricular learning activities for their children, which could reduce their sleeping time and affect their learning, adding that parents should make sure children are getting enough sleep.
The organization said the survey showed that adolescents who spend more time on the Internet or playing computer games have greater rates of insomnia.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching