Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Jan;167(1):55-60.
doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.423.

Norms and trends of sleep time among US children and adolescents

Jessica A Williams  1 , Frederick J Zimmerman, Janice F Bell
Affiliations

Norms and trends of sleep time among US children and adolescents

Jessica A Williams et al. JAMA Pediatr. 2013 Jan.

Abstract

Objectives: To develop national sleep norms conditional on age and to examine stratification by sex, race/ethnicity, and changes over time.

Design: Secondary analysis of a panel survey.

Setting: The 3 waves (1997, 2002, and 2007) of the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a nationally representative survey.

Participants: Children from birth to 18 years with time-diary data were included: 2832 children in 1997, 2520 children in 2002, and 1424 children in 2007.

Main exposure: Age.

Main outcome measures: Minutes of sleep for daytime and total sleep.

Results: The 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles of the distribution of children's minutes of sleep conditional on age were estimated using a double-kernel estimator that incorporates sample weights. Total average sleep was estimated at more than 13 hours a day for infants, decreasing steadily throughout childhood and early adolescence, reaching about 9 hours a day for 14- to 18-year-olds. The estimated conditional percentiles were higher on weekends than on weekdays for older children. The conditional percentiles for the weekend sleep minutes were flatter with respect to age than the weekday sleep minutes. The interquartile ranges were greater for children younger than 6 years and for teenagers. The medians stratified by race/ethnicity and sex were similar for most ages. For different survey years, the estimated medians were within a few minutes of each other.

Conclusions: These estimates are consistent with the amount of sleep recommended for children, and no evidence was found of racial/ethnic differences.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Age-conditional 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles of the distribution of children’s number of minutes of sleep for weekdays, weekends, and overall. A, For weekday total sleep; B, for weekend total sleep; C, for overall sleep; D, for weekday daytime sleep through age 5; E, for weekend daytime sleep through age 5; F, for overall daytime sleep through age 5.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Median comparisons of the distribution of children’s sleep by race/ethnicity and sex. A, By race/ethnicity; B, by sex.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Median comparison by survey year. This figure shows the age-conditional medians estimated by survey year for 1997, 2002, and 2007.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Matricciani L, Olds T, Williams M. A review of evidence for the claim that children are sleeping less than in the past. Sleep. 2011;34(5):651–659. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chervin RD, Dillon JE, Bassetti C, Ganoczy DA, Pituch KJ. Symptoms of sleep disorders, inattention, and hyperactivity in children. Sleep. 1997;20(12):1185–1192. - PubMed
    1. Beebe DW, Krivitzky L, Wells CT, Wade SL, Taylor HG, Yeates KO. Brief report: parental report of sleep behaviors following moderate or severe pediatric traumatic brain injury. J Pediatr Psychol. 2007;32(7):845–850. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Stein MA, Mendelsohn J, Obermeyer WH, Amromin J, Benca R. Sleep and behavior problems in school-aged children [published online April 1, 2001] [Accessed September 11, 2012];Pediatrics. 2001 107(4):E60. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/107/4/e60.long. - PubMed
    1. Gupta NK, Mueller WH, Chan W, Meininger JC. Is obesity associated with poor sleep quality in adolescents? Am J Hum Biol. 2002;14(6):762–768. - PubMed