Summarize Hanging out with friends and staying up late may not be different from what some teens did 30 years ago, but new research suggests technological distractions that teens have access to today cut into the quality of their much-needed rest. Yet despite years of warnings about the risks of insufficient sleep—including poor school performance, obesity and, as presented in June at an annual meeting of sleep researchers, links to depression—teens and their parents say adolescent exhaustion remains a fact of life. And the best they can do is to balance their teens’ need for sleep with their need to keep up with today’s technology. “Teens don’t value sleep because there’s too many things going on to distract them,” Nikides said.