According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), “there is no precise number of minutes or hours of sleep at night that guarantees you will wake up feeling totally refreshed.” That’s because the quality of your sleep is also important. However, there is an optimum range of hours needed for the sleep stages to run their course, and children and adolescents require more sleep time than adults since their brains and bodies are still developing.
The CDC has found that, “based on your age and lifestyle, what’s recommended for you likely falls within a certain range.” Here are the current age-specific guidelines:
- Newborns (0-3 months): Between 14 and 17 hours of sleep. This includes daytime naps, since newborns rarely sleep through the night.
- Older infants (4-12 months): Between 12 to 16 hours, including naps.
- Toddlers (1-2 years): Between 11 and 14 hours, including naps.
- Preschoolers (3-5 years): 10 to 13 hours, including naps.
- School-age kids (6-12 years): 9 to 12 hours each night.
- Teenagers (13-17 years): 8 to 10 hours nightly. About 75% of Utah teens are getting less than 8 hours a night on a regular basis. This is partly because of their natural hormonal delay in circadian rhythms, which pushes the need to sleep about two hours later.
- Adults (18-61 years): 7 (minimum) to 9 hours nightly. The need to nap for adults could indicate inadequate quantity and quality of sleep, or a medical condition that should be investigated.
- Older adults (65 and older): 7 to 8 hours nightly.