Short Sleep Duration and Persistent Sadness or Hopelessness Among U.S. High School Students, 2013–2023: A Sex-Specific Comparison of National Trends

Abstract

This study evaluated how closely the national prevalence of U.S. high school students getting less than eight hours of sleep on an average school night tracked the national prevalence of persistent sadness or hopelessness across the six YRBS survey years from 2013 to 2023, and whether that pattern of co-movement differed between male and female students. This study used data collected by the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), a program run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through its biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). The same correlation was calculated separately for male and female students, using sex-specific prevalence rates for both short sleep duration and persistent sadness or hopelessness. This study hypothesized that the two national trends would move together more closely among female students than among male students. The reported correlations were similar in size: r = .80 among female students and r = .77 among male students. With only six survey years, this descriptive comparison cannot establish whether the relationship differs between the sexes. It also does not show whether a particular student who sleeps less is more likely to report persistent sadness or hopelessness. The findings may be relevant to ongoing discussions about high school start times, though this analysis cannot establish that adjusting school start times would directly reduce depressive symptoms among students.