A new study of 16- to 24-year-olds suggests that sleeping in on weekends may help buffer teens and young adults against symptoms of depression. The findings highlight how even imperfect sleep habits can still support mental health.
Letting teenagers sleep in on the weekend might do more than curb crankiness at the breakfast table. It may also help protect their mental health.
New research from the University of Oregon and the State University of New York Upstate Medical University finds that adolescents and young adults who catch up on sleep on weekends have a significantly lower risk of depressive symptoms than those who do not.
The study, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, focused on 16- to 24-year-olds in the United States, a group that often struggles with both sleep and mental health. The researchers found that young people who slept longer on weekends to make up for lost sleep during the week had a 41% lower risk of reporting symptoms of depression compared with peers who did not catch up on sleep.
The work adds a new twist to a long-standing message about teen sleep. Experts still say the gold standard is eight to 10 hours of sleep every night, on a consistent schedule. But the new findings suggest that when that ideal is out of reach, weekend catch-up sleep may offer some protection.
Sleep scientist and licensed psychologist Melynda Casement, an associate professor in the University of Oregon’s College of Arts and Sciences and director of the UO Sleep Lab, co-authored the paper with Jason Carbone, an assistant professor of public health and preventive medicine and of family medicine at SUNY Upstate.
Casement noted that the standard advice can be hard to follow in real life.
“Sleep researchers and clinicians have long recommended that adolescents get eight to 10 hours of sleep at a regular time every day of the week, but that’s just not practical for a lot of adolescents, or people generally,” she said in a news release.
Teens often juggle early school start times, homework, sports, clubs, social lives and, for many, after-school jobs. Those demands can push bedtimes later while wake-up times stay fixed, creating a chronic sleep deficit by Friday.
To understand how weekend habits might affect mental health, the researchers analyzed data from the 2021–23 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a large, nationally representative survey of U.S. residents. Participants ages 16 to 24 reported their usual bedtimes and wake-up times on weekdays and weekends. From that, the researchers calculated “weekend catch-up sleep” as the difference between average sleep per weekend day and average sleep per weekday.
The same participants also reported how they were feeling emotionally. They were counted as having symptoms of depression if they said they felt sad or depressed every day.
When the researchers compared sleep patterns and mood, a clear pattern emerged: those who used weekends to sleep longer were less likely to report daily feelings of sadness or depression.
The study is among the first to look at weekend catch-up sleep in a broad sample of typical U.S. adolescents and young adults. Earlier research on the topic focused mainly on school-age teens in China and Korea, where school schedules and cultural expectations can differ from those in the United States.
The findings also fit with what scientists know about how sleep changes during adolescence. Biological sleep cycles, or circadian rhythms, shift later in the teen years, making it harder for many young people to fall asleep early, even if they are tired.
“Instead of being a morning lark you’re going to become more of a night owl,” Casement added. “And that keeps progressively delaying in adolescence until age 18 to 20. Then after that, you start becoming more morning larkish again.”
For many teens, the body’s preferred schedule would be roughly 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. But high school and college schedules often demand earlier wake-up times, forcing students to cut sleep short.
That mismatch has fueled a growing public health push to start schools later in the morning, backed by sleep scientists and health care providers who argue that better-aligned schedules could improve both learning and mental health.
Until such structural changes are widespread, the new study suggests that families and educators might think differently about weekend sleep. Rather than treating sleeping in as laziness, it may be helpful to see it as a partial remedy for a week of short nights.
Casement emphasized that the goal is still to help teens get enough sleep overall. But when that is not possible, she said, weekend recovery sleep can be a realistic and beneficial strategy.
“It’s normal for teens to be night owls, so let them catch up on sleep on weekends if they can’t get enough sleep during the week because that’s likely to be somewhat protective,” added Casement.
The stakes are high. Depression is one of the leading causes of disability among 16- to 24-year-olds, broadly defined as trouble with daily functioning, such as missing work or school or struggling to keep up with responsibilities.
That makes this age group a crucial focus for prevention, according to Casement.
“It makes that age range of particular interest in trying to understand risk factors for depression and how those might relate to delivery of interventions,” she said.
The new findings do not mean that any amount of weekend sleeping in can fully erase the effects of chronic sleep loss, and the study does not prove that catch-up sleep directly causes lower depression risk. But it does point to sleep as a practical, modifiable factor that families, schools and health providers can pay attention to.
For teens and young adults, the takeaway is straightforward: aiming for eight to 10 hours of sleep a night is still best. When that is not realistic, protecting weekend mornings and allowing extra rest may be one simple way to support mental health during a vulnerable stage of life.
Source: University of Oregon