I was sitting in class, my freshman year of college, quietly taking notes, when suddenly something crawled up from underneath the seat in front of me. I recoiled in horror: It was a witch!  Then I woke up. While my in-class nightmare may have been extreme, I was hardly unique in my sleep deprivation — recent research shows America’s young people are, in general, a drowsy lot. And some say schools should change their schedules to accommodate them.  At The Atlantic, Jessica Lahey reports on a new policy paper issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics, in which Dr. Judith A. Owens and her co-authors write that “the average adolescent in the United States is chronically sleep deprived and pathologically sleepy (i.e., regularly experiencing levels of sleepiness commensurate with those of patients with sleep disorders such as narcolepsy).” They argue that sleep deprivation hurts children’s school performance and puts them at risk of anxiety disorders, car crashes and Type 2 diabetes. To address the problem, they recommend that “in most districts, middle and high-schools should aim for a starting time of no earlier than 8:30 a.m.” to allow kids to get the sleep they need.  Why force schools to change? Ms. Lahey writes that “moving bedtimes earlier is not going to fix the problem, particularly for adolescents.” She explains:  “Teens stay up later not because they don’t want to go to sleep, but because they can’t. Due to the delayed release of melatonin in the adolescent brain and a lack of ‘sleep drive’ in response to fatigue, teens do not feel sleepy until much later at night than young children or adults and have difficulty falling asleep, even when they are tired.”  She also quotes Dr. Owens, the lead author of the paper, whose daughter went to a school that changed its start time to 8:30 with favorable results: “I actually got to reap the benefits of a better-rested, more alert, and much less irritable student as both a mom and a sleep researcher!”  And college students may not be doing much better than I was when I faced the imaginary witch. In materials recently released by the University of Alabama ahead of a paper on the subject, the health science professor Adam Knowlden says around 60 percent of college students fail to get enough sleep, compared with 33 percent of people in general. Mr. Knowlden also argues that “college students’ ability to get sufficient sleep is more within their control, whereas the general adult population is more likely to be dealing with medical sleep disorders.”  He does note that students “can struggle to find the balance between juggling classes, finances, social lives, athletics, volunteer work, parental expectations and employment” — and college students may have obligations that get them up earlier, or keep them up later, than high school kids. But for some, college brings the welcome ability to choose your classes so that you don’t have to be ready to take notes at 8 a.m. At the Minnesota Daily, the student paper of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Connor Nikolic writes,  “It may sound silly, but one of my first goals when I came to the University and set my own schedule was to ensure that I wouldn’t have to worry about staying awake through early morning classes. I knew I had a tendency to stay up late, and it had cost me many hours of valuable shut-eye in high school.”  He describes his high-school predicament:  “Class started by 7:45 a.m., but my bus came at about 7. On mornings I wanted to come early and work with my trigonometry teacher, I would have to leave by 6:30. If I woke at 5:45, I would have had to fall asleep by 10 p.m. the night before to get my full eight hours.”  He agrees that schools should institute later start times, citing research showing students feel and perform better when they start class later. And, he notes, the research might help college students — some of whom are still teens — plan their schedules, too: “While we may think we are adults, college students shouldn’t be quick to deny their bodies ample — and natural — time to catch some Z’s.”  My college sleepiness wasn’t my school’s fault — I had some flexibility in my schedule, and I didn’t take any early-morning classes. Rather, I just didn’t care about sleeping — I did everything else, from working to studying to hanging out with my friends, first. I was operating under the assumption — common among my classmates at the time, if memory serves — that sleep didn’t matter.  Sleeping is starting to get more attention, thanks to high-profile proponents like Arianna Huffington. Still, Dr. Owens and her co-authors at the American Academic of Pediatrics write that “one of the biggest challenges school districts face” in instituting later start times is educating parents, teachers, students and everybody else involved in kids’ education about “the threats to health, safety, and academic success posed by insufficient sleep.” If they succeed, maybe the kids of the future will pay more attention to their teachers, and less to characters from their subconscious sneaking up from under the seats.  This article is part of Op-Talk, a new feature of NYT Opinion. 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Experts say kids are so sleep-deprived it’s hurting their health, and some argue that starting school later is the answer.