Ah, yes. Daylight saving time — some hate it, some love it, but it still comes back. Maximizing daytime hours, more sun, less nighttime — who could ask for more? Doesn’t that sound great?
Well, there’s more to the story.
Daylight saving time, or DST, is the practice of setting clocks one hour forward in the spring — spring forward — and one hour back in the fall — fall back. The intention is to maximize daylight hours in the spring and summer, which sounds great in theory. So what’s the issue?
While supporters of DST say that it helps save on electricity, the actual energy savings are inconclusive. While it does promote outdoor activity in the summer, the benefits go more to big businesses — more daylight hours after work and school make it more likely people will go shopping. It especially increases revenue of retailers that sell outdoor equipment and sports goods. The disruptions and inconveniences that DST causes outweigh these so-called benefits; benefits that don’t even really aim to serve the general public.
Year-round standard time is optimal for public health and safety. While fewer daylight hours may be frustrating, I’d rather have that over negative impacts on mental and physical health. The struggle to adjust to a new sleep schedule can cause sleep deprivation, lack of focus and decreased levels of serotonin.
The time shift also correlates to increased risk of fatal car accidents due to aforementioned sleep deprivation.
Part of the reason for these car crashes is a condition called “social jetlag,” a result of the mismatch between the body’s clock and local time. Standard time, the time we set during the fall and winter, is what our bodies are naturally used to, and time shifts disrupt our natural circadian rhythms.
DST is not practiced consistently across the United States either. Hawaii and Arizona — with the exception of the Navajo Indian Reservation, which extends into Utah and New Mexico — do not observe DST, and neither do the territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico or the United States Virgin Islands. This inconsistency is inconvenient and highly confusing.
Increased daylight hours allow more time for fresh air and Vitamin D and more time for kids to go play outside after school or for adults taking a walk after work. It boosts tourism, making travel more optimal and providing more opportunities to explore. But is DST really worth it — and who really benefits?
State-wide bills to either end DST or make it permanent have been introduced in several states around the country, as well as nationwide legislation, including the Sunshine Protection Act of 2019, which proposed to make DST permanent. While it was unanimously passed in the U.S. Senate in 2022, the House of Representatives did not pass it. Furthermore, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine has opposed the Sunshine Protection Act, calling for permanent standard time.
We’ve already tried year-round DST in 1974, when Congress attempted a year-round trial of it. Just as it is now, it was a hotly-debated topic. But it ended up getting cut short — it wasn’t safe for children going to school in the darkness and within weeks of the trial’s start, eight kids in Florida were killed in traffic accidents.
If permanent DST didn’t work then, why would it work any better now? Shouldn’t we try to switch to permanent standard time instead, if we already have proof that year-round DST doesn’t work?
Only about one-third of the world’s countries use DST, most of them being in Europe, and many countries have started ditching the practice. Russia switched to permanent standard time in 2014 after a 2011 trial of permanent DST found Russian opinion of DST to be largely unfavorable, citing unnecessary stress and health problems.
For most of Mexico, DST was abolished in 2022, as DST was found to save an insufficient amount of energy per year and also led to negative health effects. Some areas are exempt from the removal of DST, mostly those near the United States’ border, to ease commerce and stress those who commute across the border.
The results are clear — time shifts largely aren’t good for us and our health. It succeeds in making us exhausted, potentially being late to work or class due to said exhaustion and throwing off our sleep schedules more than anything else. Other countries have been successful returning to permanent standard time with positive effects. The main thing that seems to be stopping the United States is that it benefits business and capitalism — DST was never for the good of the people.
It’s time to stop springing forward — instead, it’s time to leave DST in the past.
Antaine Anhalt is a first-year communication studies major and columnist for The News. He can be reached at [email protected].
