In five days we will wake up, our bodies confused and our internal clocks messed up because we decide to go forward one hour on all our clocks. We have changed clocks for a century, but it is time we stop and leave the practice in the past.
The beginnings of daylight savings time come from Germany in World War I as a way to conserve energy. Although Ben Franklin did propose the idea to the French in order for them to make better use of their time, Germany is the first country to actually implement a DST, according to Jeanna Bryner on Live Science.
Germany thought it would conserve energy, so America decided to use it for the same reasons in wartime and used it twice in World War I and World War II. In 1974 Richard Nixon signed an act into law making DST official and uniform in the U.S..
Ignoring the fact Nixon signed this act into law, we should pay attention to the fact DST does not actually save energy, or at least not a sizeable enough amount of energy to make it worth continuing.
According to a report by the Department of Energy, electricity savings were 0.5 percent per day, or 0.03 percent over the entire year. The study also found the changes in traffic volume and energy from cars were so statistically insignificant, it could not be attributed to DST.
If it does not conserve energy, what other things does DST allow us to save or do better? One argument is productivity in work and commerce; as in, if people have more daylight, they can do more and be more productive with the number of hours they have. This also means they have more time for recreation like we do in the summer.
According to Brian Handwerk from National Geographic, on the debate of DST in the state of Utah, the Golf Alliance of Utah states if DST was abolished and they lost an hour, they would see a six percent reduction of play during peak season, resulting in the loss of $24 million per year to the Utah economy.
In a study by Thomas Kantermann, Myriam Juda, Martha Merrow and Till Roenneberg for Current Biology, the effect of the change in times on the body is often determined by a chronotype most people have, which allows them to adjust to falling back more so than springing forward. It is like moving westward in time zones like you do in fall DST, and moving eastward in time zones like you do in spring.
This means most of the United States’ population suffers every spring – which mind you, is less than a week away. So what can we do to change this and keep a somewhat similar time as to what we have?
First, we should recognize both Arizona and Hawaii have completely ditched DST, and they are still alive and surviving, so we know the world would not end. We should also understand our bodies will want to wake up and go to sleep naturally based on the sunlight outside.
Whatever we do will influence our bodies in terms of sleep, although it would be more natural if DST was abandoned. The major problem with DST is we are forcing our bodies to change after they are used to one time. If we stuck with one time, we would be fine and would not have to waste time changing clocks in our cars and other non-mobile devices.
We should get rid of DST due to the fact it does not save energy, it affects most of us in a negative manner and we have the technology to allow us to continue to work regardless of the sun’s positioning in the sky.
It is time we spring forward or fall away from the century-old practice of changing our clocks. It is time we give our bodies the chance to adapt to the changing time of the sun rising and setting in the most natural way possible.