A Naturalistic Actigraphic Assessment of Changes in Adolescent Sleep, Light Exposure, and Activity Before and During COVID-19 - PubMed (original) (raw)

A Naturalistic Actigraphic Assessment of Changes in Adolescent Sleep, Light Exposure, and Activity Before and During COVID-19

Corey A Rynders et al. J Biol Rhythms. 2022 Dec.

Abstract

The majority of high school-aged adolescents obtain less than the recommended amount of sleep per night, in part because of imposed early school start times. Utilizing a naturalistic design, the present study evaluated changes in objective measurements of sleep, light, and physical activity before (baseline) and during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (during COVID-19) in a group of US adolescents. Sixteen adolescents (aged 15.9 ± 1.2 years, 68.8% female) wore an actigraphy monitor for 7 consecutive days during an in-person week of school before the pandemic (October 2018-February 2020) and again during the pandemic when instruction was performed virtually (May 2020). Delayed weekday sleep onset times of 1.66 ± 1.33 h (p < 0.001) and increased sleep duration of 1 ± 0.87 h (p < 0.001) were observed during COVID-19 compared with baseline. Average lux was significantly higher during COVID-19 compared with baseline (p < 0.001). Weekday physical activity parameters were not altered during COVID-19 compared with baseline, except for a delay in the midpoint of the least active 5 h (p value = 0.044). This analysis provides insight into how introducing flexibility into the traditional school schedule might influence sleep in adolescents.

Keywords: COVID-19; adolescents; circadian rhythms; school start times; sleep.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: K.P.W. reports during the conduct of the study being a consultant to/and/or receiving personal fees from Circadian Therapeutics, Inc., Circadian Biotherapies, Inc., Philips, Inc. outside the submitted work. All other authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.

Sleep timing (a) and duration (b) at baseline and during the COVID-19 pandemic on weekdays and weekends. Sleep onset and offset were significantly delayed on both weekdays and weekends during the COVID-19 week compared with baseline. Sleep duration on weekdays significantly increased during COVID-19 compared with baseline, while weekday sleep duration was not significantly different between time points.

Figure 2.

Weekday light (ln lux; a) and daily accelerometer counts (b) at baseline and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The standard deviation in the average local time of sleep onset and offset are shown by the black and red horizontal bars. In addition, for accelerometry, horizontal lines are included to indicate the standard deviation in the local time of the lowest level of activity over a 5-h period (L5) and the highest level of activity over a 10-h period (M10). The gray background indicates the range (minimum and maximum) of the observed light exposures or accelerometer counts. Color version of the figure is available online.

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A Naturalistic Actigraphic Assessment of Changes in Adolescent Sleep, Light Exposure, and Activity Before and During COVID-19 - PubMed (original) (raw)