Also there is a health problem that teenagers face which some doctors have discovered. It's insomnia in teenagers, which is being reported with increasing frequency. Doctors acknowledge that it's a real problem for some teenagers these days, just being unable to sleep at night. What causes insomnia in teenagers? There's certainly the lifestyle that teenagers adopt, which is probably the same as it always used to be. They stay up late at night, especially on the weekend, and then are unable to get up early during the week. It's not uncommon for them to sleep at lunchtime or immediately after school, which makes the problem of not being able to sleep at night worse. They also end up sleeping most of the weekend to try and make up for all the sleep they lost during the week. It's a bit of a vicious circle. The danger is that this can become a pattern, almost like jet lag, where your cycle of sleep adjusts itself completely out of the normal context and your body tries to tell you it's time to go to sleep, when in fact it's not at all. It can take weeks for a teenager to get back into the right sleep habits and recover from insomnia. The problem is that there is never enough time in between weekends for a proper sleep pattern to be formed. Other common causes of insomnia in teenagers are anxiety and depression. It's a fact that many teenagers are having to struggle with just about everything! It can be one of most difficult times of our lives, our adolescent years. Whether it's to do with friends, family, or school, there are almost an unlimited number of reasons why a teenager could be anxious or depressed. Unavoidably, this anxiety and depression is going to lead to sleep problems.