Racial disparities in adolescent sleep duration: Physical activity as a protective factor

Objectives: Short sleep duration compromises adolescents' functioning across many domains, yet risk for short sleep is not evenly distributed among youth in the United States. Significant Black-White disparities in sleep duration have been observed, with Black/African American youth on average sleeping fewer minutes per night than their White/European American peers. However, not all Black adolescents have short sleep, and identification of moderators of effects, including protective and vulnerability factors in the association between race/ethnicity and sleep duration, is warranted. We examined whether engagement in physical activity attenuates the gap in sleep duration between Black and White teenagers. Method: A sample of 246 adolescents (M_age = 15.79 years; 32.9% Black, 67.1% White) reported on their physical activity and participated in 1 week of at-home actigraphic sleep assessment, which was used to derive sleep duration (minutes scored as asleep from sleep onset to wake time). Results: At higher levels of physical activity, relatively long sleep duration was observed for all youth regardless of their race/ethnicity. However, at lower levels of physical activity, an association emerged between race and sleep minutes, illustrating that youth most at risk for shorter sleep were Black adolescents with lower physical activity. Conclusions: Findings suggest that for Black adolescents, physical activity is a protective factor against short sleep duration and, conversely, low physical activity is a vulnerability factor. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).