Teenage 'Night Owls' More Likely To Act Impulsively

Key Takeaways

• Teens who prefer to be night owls tend to be more impulsive

• They are more likely to act rashly when feeling negative emotions and quit difficult tasks

• However, this impulsivity is only tied to their sleep preferences, not their internal body clock

FRIDAY, June 6, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Teenagers who are night owls appear to be more self-destructively impulsive, a new study says.

Teens who prefer to sleep and wake later are more impulsive than “early bird” teenagers, researchers are scheduled to report at the upcoming annual meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM).

However, this association doesn’t appear to be linked to the teens’ internal body clocks, researchers said.

The data didn’t tie teenage impulsivity to their levels of melatonin, a hormone that manages circadian rhythms.

Instead, impulsivity was linked to their self-reported preference for staying up late, researchers said.

“Surprisingly, we did not find a significant link between dim light melatonin onset and impulsivity in our sample,” said lead researcher Riya Mirchandaney, a doctoral candidate in clinical-health psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.

“This suggests that there may be unmeasured psychological or behavioral factors influencing both impulsivity and the self-assessment of circadian preference, regardless of the timing of an individual’s internal circadian clock,” she added in a news release.

For the study, researchers pooled data from 210 teenagers across two studies. The teens completed questionnaires to measure their impulsivity and preferred sleeping patterns, provided saliva samples to assess their melatonin levels, and wore a wrist device for a week to track their sleep.

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Teens who like to stay up late were more likely to act impulsively when experiencing negative emotions, reseachers found. They also were more likely to throw up their hands and quit difficult tasks rather than persevere.

Such impulsive behavior can contribute to problems like alcohol and substance use, Mirchandaney said.

Given that, parents might be able to help their teens by encouraging them to sleep normal hours, researchers said.

Mirchandaney is scheduled to present this study Monday at the AASM meeting in Seattle.

Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The Sleep Foundation has more on teens and sleep.

SOURCE: American Academy of Sleep Medicine, news release, June 2, 2025

What This Means For You

Parents should encourage their kids to sleep normal hours, rather than staying up late.