Monday at lunch my friends and I lambasted the modern-day nuclear family, decrying the things kids do these days and what parents let kids do because of their own laziness and lack of thoughtfulness.

[Note: I hope that captures the general thoughts, and I am assuming that being 30 gives me the wisdom on how "things were better back then."]

So of course, in this past weekend’s New York Magazine, there is an article about sleep and how “overstimulated, overscheduled kids” are getting less sleep than they need and how it can negatively impact their cognitive development.

Lack of sleep is variously linked to:

Memory:

Tired children can’t remember what they just learned, for instance, because neurons lose their plasticity, becoming incapable of forming the synaptic connections necessary to encode a memory.

Performance in school, ability to pay attention, etc.:

So tired people have difficulty with impulse control, and their abstract goals like studying take a back seat to more entertaining diversions. A tired brain perseverates—it gets stuck on a wrong answer and can’t come up with a more creative solution, repeatedly returning to the same answer it already knows is erroneous.

Moodiness and depression:

The result is that sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories yet recall gloomy memories just fine.

Obesity:

All the studies point in the same direction: On average, children who sleep less are fatter than children who sleep more. This isn’t just in the U.S.; scholars around the world are considering it, as they watch sleep data fall and obesity rates rise in their own countries.

(The explanation of the physical body processes that create these results is interesting, definitely read the article.)

I’ll admit, part of the case for sleep being “the cure” to the various ills is a general argument something akin to “other methods have failed, and kids are getting less sleep, so maybe sleep is the cause.” But it’s enough for me to sleep in tomorrow.

(btw the article is written by Po Bronson, definitely check out his books…)