Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
The school bus in our colony leaves at 7:10 am, so my cousin Tanvi, who is fifteen, sets her alarm for 5:45. Most mornings she sleeps through it. Her mother calls this laziness. The biology of adolescence suggests something less moral and more mechanical.
Every body keeps time with an inner clock, and one of its signals is melatonin, a hormone that tells the brain that night has come. In the teenage years, the evening release of melatonin begins later than it did in childhood, often by an hour or more. A fourteen-year-old lying awake at midnight is frequently not defying anyone. Her brain has simply not yet been told that it is time to sleep. The alarm, however, does not move. The loss is taken from the last hours of the night, when much of our dreaming sleep happens.
The effects are quiet, which is partly why they are ignored. A drowsy student does not faint in the assembly. She reads the same paragraph three times, snaps at her younger brother and reaches for a second biscuit. Anyone who has taught a first-period class knows the peculiar torpor of a room full of fifteen-year-olds at ten to eight.
Some schools, mostly abroad, have tried starting later, sometimes by as little as forty-five minutes. The reports are cautiously encouraging: fewer heads on desks, somewhat better attendance. The objections are practical, and not foolish. Buses must be rescheduled. Parents leave for offices that open at fixed hours. Evening tuitions get pushed later still, which rather defeats the purpose.
Tanvi’s school has not changed anything. She has stopped arguing with her mother, though, and now leaves her phone in the kitchen after ten. It is a small truce with a clock she never chose to set.
Which of the following best expresses the central idea of the passage?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Teenagers’ late nights owe much to a change in their body clock, and early classes quietly eat into their sleep in ways that are hard to fix.
The passage explains why teenagers sleep late and what an early school start does to them.
- In the teenage years melatonin is released later in the evening. So the late nights are “less moral and more mechanical”. They come from how the body works, not from laziness.
- The alarm does not move, so sleep is lost. The effects are “quiet”, which is why people ignore them.
- A later start helps a little, but buses, office hours and tuitions make it hard to change. So the problem is not easy to fix.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Teenagers sleep late mainly because of their phones, and keeping phones out of the bedroom restores a healthy routine. — Incorrect. Wrong link: Tanvi keeps her phone in the kitchen after ten. But the passage gives melatonin, not the phone, as the main reason for late sleep.
Option 2: Schools that have moved their start time later have largely solved the problem of sleepy teenagers in the classroom. — Incorrect. Overstated: The reports are only “cautiously encouraging”. There are fewer heads on desks, not a problem solved.
Option 3: Parents who mistake tiredness for laziness are the main reason why teenagers get too little sleep. — Incorrect. Wrong focus: Tanvi’s mother does call it laziness. But the passage says the sleep is lost because of the body clock and the early alarm, not because of parents.