Letters | If lack of sleep damages health, are Hong Kong students paying too high a price for good grades?
- The endless quest for ever better test scores means students’ sleeping hours keep shrinking, probably causing damage to their long-term health
The researchers pointed out that sleep disruption/deprivation is not good for the genes, and could even lead to cancer. That should be a cause for concern for teenagers in Hong Kong, whose lives are also fast-paced. Most students have to attend after-school tutorial classes to boost their examination skills, and then spend hours doing revisions, which places them under unrelenting stress. The result is night-time rest hours keep shrinking. To ensure good results and therefore university admission and a secure future, they prefer to keep studying instead of going to bed. Even if they know that this lack of sleep will lead to irremediable effects on their health and future quality of life, do they have a choice?
Hazel Fong, Kwai Chung
Stretched students must turn to social media for friendship
I am writing to express my views on the issue of adolescents spending too much time on social networking. Teenagers are often blamed for scrolling through Facebook or Instagram all the time. But it is a fact that, under the exam-oriented education system in Hong Kong, we students are constantly fed a lot of learning materials and are under great pressure. With after-school hours taken up by homework and revisions, most don’t have enough free time to meet their friends face to face, and using social media becomes the only way for them to connect and keep in touch.
Jessie Leung, Sham Shui Po
