No sleep.

It’s a chain reaction.

We’re all teenagers. Who needs sleep? 

Right?

Wrong.

Sleep deprivation is a thing. And it’s so real that one wrong move and you’re struggling for the rest of your life.

The downside to not sleeping is that the consequences are honestly so dire. It’s hard to picture things getting messed up because you decided to watch an extra episode or two, but take it from me, it’s so easy for life to unravel while you’re in the passenger seat watching. 

Studies show that teenagers need at least eight to 10 hours of sleep every night for them to be able to function properly throughout their daily routine. Truthfully, I don’t get that much sleep at all and it’s by far one of my worst habits. You’ll spend the whole day feeling groggy and it’ll be difficult to retain the information that you learned in school.

Sleep deprivation is one of the most harmful things that we can present to a healthy body. It can result in early diabetes, heart problems, and high blood pressure. And that’s just the medical related aftermath.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. As a teenager, our prefrontal cortexes aren’t fully developed, which in turn leads to adolescents making impulsive decisions.

 Now when you put together the mental deficiencies that sleep deprivation will give you such as memory impairment and a lack of alertness with the hasty choices that our brains make at this point in our lives, we could potentially be setting ourselves up for danger. 

In today’s society, it’s crucial that you’re aware of your surroundings and that you protect yourself in times of need. But such a simple task of being able to figure out where you are or make a simple phone call becomes inconvenient all due to the mistake of not getting enough sleep. It’s a fruitless endeavor and at the same time it could be life threatening.

Certain times, it is necessary to cut off a few hours of your sleep, and that’s understandable. But when it gets so repetitive to the point where it’s unnatural for you to sleep at the right time, that’s when you know you need to take a step back and evaluate your choices and actions.

Who needs sleep?

We all do.