Sunday, March 9 marked the first time this year that people in the United States will change their clocks in accordance with the beginning or end of daylight savings time (DST).

In the United States this practice dates back to an early proposal written by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 that seems to have been more of a joke than a real idea, but at any rate it was never implemented until the Standard Time Act of March 19, 1918, which was passed during World War I and was widely unpopular (especially among farmers, which is ironic because many people believe that the whole point of DST is to help farmers).

After the war, Congress abolished daylight savings time, and although it was implemented again by FDR during World War II, a federal standard was not established until President Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act of 1966 (which went into effect in 1967), which set the start of DST on the last Sunday in April to advance forward one hour at 2 a.m. and ending on the last Sunday in October to set the clocks back to standard time. 

In 1986, DST was extended so that it would begin on the first Sunday in April, and in 2005 the Energy Policy Act was passed, which gave us our current DST period beginning on the second Sunday in March and ending on the first Sunday in November, taking effect in 2007. In recent years there have been several efforts mounted to pass the Sunshine Protection Act, which proposes to set the United States on daylight savings time year-round, effectively shifting the country’s standard time zones forward by one hour permanently. The act did pass in the Senate in 2022, but has never been passed by the House of Representatives (although it was reintroduced by two Florida congressmen in January), and proponents of the act say that it would not only give us more time in the evenings during summer but also reduce the amount of dark winter mornings.

The intention behind observing daylight savings time, at least since 1967, was to save energy and allow people to wake up closer to sunrise during the longer summer days. However, there are many adverse effects from shifting the clocks back and forth that have led to a push for the abolishment of daylight savings time. Farmers whose cows’ milking patterns do not change with the clock, parents whose children must commute to school in the dark due to a later sunrise and researchers at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine are all among the opponents to our semiannual time change.

So what’s the solution? A 2023 poll found that 62% of Americans would prefer to stop changing their clocks twice a year, however there isn’t a clear consensus among the public on which solution is better: permanent daylight time or permanent standard time. Supporters of permanent daylight time argue that an extra hour of sunlight in the evening will promote outdoor exercise and leisure activities, reduce crime, cause fewer traffic incidents and possibly even decrease the effects of seasonal depression. That is all well and good, and makes the Sunshine Protection Act seem very favorable, but there is still one big issue with switching to permanent daylight time. 

Standard time is set up to be more in line with humans’ natural circadian rhythms, and permanently jumping forward by an hour would cause a big disruption in our natural sleep patterns. Poor sleep has been linked to lower GPAs among college students, as well as a decrease in workers’ productivity that costs the United States an estimated $411 billion each year. Eliminating the practice of daylight savings time would allow for people’s sleep schedules to actually align with their circadian rhythms, which are largely dictated by the presence and absence of light, and would improve not only physical health but also social wellness, as sleep loss has also been found to negatively affect people’s motivations to help one another. 

Standard time is also thought to make morning commutes safer, and it would likely be better for the environment to switch to permanent standard time since there is an increase in heater use in the mornings, driving in the evenings and evening air conditioning use during daylight savings time, which contributes to higher energy use and pollution. 

In the end, I hope that the Sunshine Protection Act gets flipped to establish standard time as the permanent time in the US rather than its currently proposed permanent daylight time. Not only is standard time more natural for humans, it is also generally better for our health and for the environment, and it would mean we could finally stop waking up jet-lagged twice a year for benefits that are greatly outweighed by their drawbacks.