P39 Changes of sleep duration in adolescents over time: a cross-temporal meta-analysis

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Greenwood, Abbie and Xiao, Qiyue and Gardani, Maria and Takacs, Zsofia K (2026) P39 Changes of sleep duration in adolescents over time: a cross-temporal meta-analysis. BMJ Open Respiratory Research, 13 (Suppl ). A40.1-A40. (https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjresp-2026-bss.62)

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Abstract

Introduction Despite evidence suggests that contemporary adolescents sleep less than previous generations (e.g., Keyes et al., 2015), findings remain mixed, often limited to a single country and with varying temporal coverage. Such temporal discontinuity hinders meaningful comparisons, highlighting the need for a more comprehensive and inclusive approach. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate changes in sleep duration among adolescents across time. Methods A cross-temporal meta-analysis was conducted to identify empirical studies that involved population-based samples comprised of young people aged between 12 and 23 years old and reported sleep duration. Linear meta-regressions were performed with the sleep duration as dependent variable and year of data collection as predictor. Results The analysis included 294 means from 84 studies, comprising n=370,440 adolescents (mean age = 15.3; 51% girls) across 23 countries with data collected between 1985 and 2022. Overall, a meta-regression showed no significant change in averaged daily sleep duration over time (β = −0.41, 95% CI [–2.27, 1.46], p = 0.67). Analyses by day type revealed contrasting patterns: unexpectedly, daily sleep duration on weekends declined by 1.27 minutes per year (β = −1.27, 95% CI [-2.18, -0.35], p = 0.007), which is around 13 minutes in a decade. Weekday sleep duration remained largely unchanged (β = 0.44, 95% CI [-1.81, 2.68], p = 0.70). Discussion Overall, adolescents’ daily sleep duration remained relatively stable from 1985 to 2022. However, weekend sleep duration appeared to decline slightly over the past 37 years. Future cross-temporal meta-analyses should explore sleep quality changes to provide more comprehensive understanding of adolescents’ sleep.

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