Weekend catch up sleep benefits teens when done right

Late nights are a badge of honor in many high‑school hallways, yet the cost often hides in plain sight. When classes, homework, and screens shave hours off nightly rest, stress hormones rise and moods wobble.

A new investigation of nearly two thousand middle‑schoolers marks out a simple guardrail: sleep in a little on weekend mornings, but stop well before lunchtime.

After tracking wrist‑device data and mental‑health scores, the team observed the best outlook in teens who added under two extra hours of shut‑eye on Saturdays and Sundays.

Sojeong Kim of the University of Oregon, presenting the findings today at the SLEEP 2025 meeting in Seattle, led the study with colleagues from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development project.

Most teens don’t sleep enough

Only 23 percent of U.S. high‑school students log at least eight hours on a school night, federal surveyors reported last year. Sparse rest shows up as poorer attention, slower memory consolidation, and heavier emotional swings.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine advises 13‑ to 18‑year‑olds to bank eight to ten hours each night for steady growth and learning.

Yet biology pushes adolescents to prefer late bedtimes, while early bells drag them out of bed before their circadian rhythm finishes its natural cycle.

Teens naturally sleep and wake up late

Teenagers experience a biological delay in their circadian rhythm, meaning they naturally fall asleep and wake up later than younger children or adults.

This shift is caused by changes in melatonin production during puberty, which pushes the body’s internal clock back by one to two hours.

Because school start times don’t align with this shift, teens are often forced to wake up while still in their biological night.

The resulting disconnect between natural sleep patterns and social demands is known as social jetlag, a condition that has been linked to mood disorders and reduced academic performance.

Weekend sleep boost of 1–2 hours helps mood

Researchers call the practice of extending weekend sleep weekend catch‑up sleep. Kim’s group sorted participants into three bands: no catch‑up, one to two hours, and more than two hours. 

Those in the middle group scored lowest on internalizing symptoms, a bundle of anxiety and low mood markers, even after the team adjusted for sex, race, and socioeconomic status.

The results echo a South Korean cohort in which teens adding 60–119 minutes on weekends reported higher well‑being than those who slept in longer.

“The results show that both sleeping less on weekends than weekdays and sleeping substantially more on weekends were associated with higher anxiety symptoms,” explained Kim.

Weekend sleep tracked using fitbits

Researchers collected data from 1,877 teens with an average age of 13.5 years. Each participant wore a Fitbit device to objectively measure sleep duration across both weekdays and weekends.

To track mental health, the team used the Brief Problem Monitor–Youth, a tool that evaluates internalizing symptoms like anxiety and low mood.

Weekend catch‑up sleep was calculated by subtracting average weekday sleep from weekend totals, then categorizing teens into three groups based on this difference.

Why too much rebound can backfire

At first glance, extra hours of rest should erase weekday debt. But oversleeping drags the body clock later, making Sunday night shut‑eye harder to achieve and starting a fresh deficit cycle.

Long morning lie‑ins also trim daylight exposure, one of the easiest cues for resetting melatonin release.

Laboratory work links irregular sleep‑wake patterns with higher evening cortisol and amygdala reactivity, biological changes tied to anxious rumination.

Kim’s data reinforce the idea that stability, not sheer quantity, keeps teenage brains on an even keel.

Parents can support better sleep routines

A two‑hour allowance is practical: if a teen usually rises at 6:30 a.m., a target of 8:30 a.m. on Saturday lets friends stay up for a movie without wrecking Monday.

Families can dim house lights an hour before bed, swap late‑night scrolling for music or journaling, and schedule weekend sports or chores mid‑morning so alarms are still needed.

“Many teens try to make up for lost sleep by sleeping in on weekends,” Kim said. Parental buy‑in helps translate that urge into a measured routine rather than an open‑ended Sunday sleep marathon.

School schedules still matter

Household tweaks compete with systemic hurdles. U.S. high schools typically start before 8:00 a.m., yet laboratories show adolescent brains remain in a biological night until about that hour.

Districts that shifted bells past 8:30 a.m. report stronger attendance and lower crash rates, supporting the idea that policy can lighten the private work parents now shoulder.

Weekend guidelines will not replace nightly sufficiency. The new study found no benefit for teens who grabbed little or no rebound sleep, underscoring that weekday restriction still carried emotional costs.

Better tools may guide weekend sleep habits

Kim’s team plans longitudinal analyses to test whether moderate weekend recovery predicts future mental‑health resilience.

Wearable devices give scientists a sharper lens than self‑reports and may soon guide personalized alerts, nudging students to adjust bedtime before mood dips.

Until then, a modest Saturday lie‑in stands out as a simple win: enough to refill the tank, not enough to flood the system.

The study is published in Sleep.

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