Simulation of the Ontogeny of Social Jet Lag: A Shift in Just One of the Parameters of a Model of Sleep-Wake Regulating Process Accounts for the Delay of Sleep Phase Across Adolescence

The term “social jet lag” was introduced for defining the conflict between social and biological clocks due to the general practice of shifting weekday risetime on early morning hours. The phase delay of the sleep-wake cycle during adolescence is one of the most remarkable features of the ontogenesis of sleep that is incompatible with early school start times. It was previously proposed that the process of accumulation of sleep pressure during wakefulness is slowing down in post-pubertal teens to allow them to stay awake for a longer period of time thus causing the delay of their bedtime. In order to examine this proposition, we traced the ontogeny of social jet lag using sleep times reported for 160 samples of study participants of different ages as an input to a model of sleep-wake regulatory process. The simulations suggested that a gradual change in just one of the model’s parameters, the time constant of wakefulness phase of the sleep-wake regulatory process, might explain the association of the transition between childhood and adulthood with the prolongation of time staying awake, delay of sleep time, and reduction of sleep duration. We concluded that the implication of the sleep-wake regulating model would be of help for understanding precisely how social jet lag varies with age and what are the chronophysiological causes of this variation.