According to the findings of a small study, published in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters, teenagers need the right early morning light – especially in the blue wavelengths - to retune their body’s natural sleep clock; and lack of proper light may wreck their sleep pattern.

In the opinion of the researchers of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York, daylight is perfect source of the necessary short-wavelength “blue light” rays, which help the teenagers harmonize their inner, circadian tempo with nature’s cycles of day and night.

As such, teenagers who plod to the bus stops before daybreak or spend a greater part of their day in windowless classrooms have difficulty in going to sleep at night.

For the study, the researchers blocked the short-wavelength “blue light” for 11 eighth-grade students of an energy-efficient North Carolina school, which boasted lots of skylights into its classrooms so as to minimize the use of electric lights.

It was found that within five days of blocking “blue light,” by asking the study-participants to wear special orange goggles, the internal body clocks of the students started showing signs of going amiss – bringing about a half-hour delay in their evening surge of the sleep-inducing hormone, melatonin.

Furthermore, lead researcher Mariana Figueiro elaborated: “These morning-light-deprived teenagers are going to bed later, getting less sleep and possibly underperforming on standardized tests.”