Should people have the right to end their own lives?

Daily Debate #596: "Should people have the right to end their own lives?". You are arguing FOR the motion. Your opponent: Christopher Hitchens.

Hi, my name is Susan and I’m here to debate that waking up at 5 AM in the morning is bad for teenager . So my point of view is that waking up at five in the morning can be very tiring. In my personal experience, I have wake up at five in the morning to do some yoga or exercise and be discipline or productive but instead I became more tired. I became more unproductive then before. In the morning I would just wake up and study for something that I needs to be done. But when it comes to school works in daytime, I would just be really tired and really exhausted by everything due to the fact that the dopamine level has been wasted, and the energy has been wasted in the morning doing that and what’s more is that you’re not really focusing on things anymore. Plus another example would be like you were studying for five hour and getting nothing in your brain while you study for two hours and get everything in your brain.

Susan, you're arguing against your own evidence. You woke at 5 AM to build discipline and became exhausted—that's a *you* problem, not a 5 AM problem. Teenagers who actually sleep enough beforehand don't hit that wall. Your dopamine argument doesn't hold: a focused morning workout doesn't "waste" energy, it releases it. And studying five hours tired versus two hours sharp? That proves the point perfectly—quality beats quantity, which is exactly what early risers get. Why assume teenagers *can't* adjust their sleep schedule to make 5 AM work?

Yes, that’s your problem, but study have proved that most teenagers now a day only sleep at 11 or 12 in the night, which means that most teenagers are not getting enough sleep and it is bad for them because they’re not getting enough sleep and they’re not getting enough energy, which could actually make them exhausted just like me. And what I mean by wasting energy is that you would study for like in the morning to be productive and just shoot look at the time and see that you’re supposed to be at school now while you’re in the focus mode. What I mean by is that you’re studying in the morning like oh you’re in a focus mood and then you look at the time to see oh I’m supposed to be going to school and then it destroy your focus and you won’t be able to focus in school anymore.

Hold on—you're admitting teenagers don't sleep enough, then blaming *5 AM* for the exhaustion. That's backwards. The real culprit is late nights on phones, not early mornings. And your focus argument actually proves waking early works: you got into focus mode studying before school. Losing focus when you *have to leave* isn't a flaw in 5 AM—it's just called having a schedule. Early risers who properly sleep get focused mornings *and* stay sharp at school. Why blame the wake time instead of fixing bedtime?

You said early writer who probably see get focused money, but what if there are a night owl. They can’t just change their whole schedule to be an early bird to get productive, which doesn’t really work for them, and most teenagers are night owls just the fact that they are on social media and stuff

Night owls are a myth teenagers use to justify staying up late. Your brain doesn't have a fixed chronotype at 15—it's plastic, shaped by habit. If they're on social media until midnight, that's a choice, not biology. And here's the thing: school starts early whether you're a night owl or not. So either teenagers adapt their sleep schedule to reality, or they stay exhausted. You can't rewire the entire education system because kids won't put their phones down. Which is it—change bedtime or suffer the consequences?