COVID-19 and sleep patterns in adolescents and young adults

Abstract

Objective: In March 2020, the world experienced a global pandemic, which involved the shutdown of schools or a transposition to remote teaching in most countries. The objective of the present study was to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic related lockdown on sleep patterns and sleep quality in adolescents and young adults.

Methods: An online survey was conducted in June 2020 with adolescents and young adults (n = 498) aged 12-25 years. Participants had to answer questions on sleep, first retrospectively, referring to the time prior to the pandemic, and then referring to the time during the pandemic.

Results: A pronounced shift towards later sleep combined with an increase in sleep duration was found during the pandemic. However, these changes in sleep habits were more pronounced in adolescents than in young adults and seem to occur mostly during weekdays compared to weekends. During the pandemic, teens also reported an improvement in daytime sleepiness and subjective sleep quality, while young adults reported an increase in sleep difficulties associated with sleep onset difficulties, nocturnal and early morning awakenings, and nightmares.

Conclusions: The COVID-19 related lockdown seems to have had a beneficial effect on sleep in adolescents. In young adults, benefits are not as obvious. These results support that later school start times would be beneficial for adolescents. However, in young adults it could be important to investigate the effects of other situational or interindividual factors (stress, lifestyle habits, employment, etc.).

Keywords: Age differences; Coronavirus; Phase delay; Youth.

Fig. 1

Post hoc paired t-tests for subjective sleep quality before and during the pandemic. ∗∗∗p < 0.001; ∗∗p < 0.01. Error bars represent standard errors of mean (SEM). Higher score means an improvement in subjective sleep quality.

Fig. 2

Post hoc paired t-tests for excessive daytime sleepiness before and during the pandemic. ∗∗p < 0.01. Error bars represent standard errors of mean (SEM). Higher score means more excessive daytime sleepiness.

Fig. 3

Post hoc paired t-tests for sleep difficulties associated with sleep onset difficulties before and during the pandemic. ∗∗∗p < 0.001, Error bars represent standard errors of mean (SEM), Higher score means more sleep onset difficulties.

Fig. 4

Post hoc paired t-tests for sleep difficulties associated with nocturnal and early morning awakenings before and during the pandemic. ∗∗∗p < 0.001; ∗∗p < 0.01, Error bars represent standard errors of mean (SEM), Higher score means more nocturnal and early morning awakenings.

Fig. 5

Post hoc paired t-tests for sleep difficulties associated with nightmares before and during the pandemic. ∗∗∗p < 0.001; ∗∗p < 0.01, Error bars represent standard errors of mean (SEM), Higher score means more nightmares.