Every parent knows kids need a good night’s sleep to be at their best. And still, young Americans from elementary school age through high school, are sleeping significantly less today than they did thirty years ago.

With homework and TV and the Internet and video games and parents getting home later from work, it’s easy to kill another hour before bedtime.

But mounting research suggests that erosion of sleep time may be more costly than we imagined: in brain development, learning capacity, even in ADHD and obesity.

This hour, On Point: the kids are not in bed, and what that’s costing them.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Po Bronson, writer and social documentarian. He wrote the recent New York magazine cover story “Snooze or Lose.”

Dr. Judith Owens, director of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Clinic at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.

Ric Dressen, Superintendent of Schools in Edina, Minnesota.