Should We Get Rid of Daylight Saving Time?

For many of us, the month of March means three things: wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day, watching basketball during March Madness, and suffering through the most miserable, most horrid day of the entire year. The day we dread. The day we’d like to pretend does not exist. The day that daylight saving time (DST) begins.

At 2 a.m. on March 8, the clock will spring forward one hour—and you will lose 60 minutes of precious sleep. For the next week or so, you’ll feel groggy and tired.

Meanwhile, across the United States, car accidents, workplace injuries, and heart attacks will all spike—likely because everyone is more tired. Perhaps it’s not surprising that 70 percent of Americans say they’d rather not change their clocks.*

So why don’t we just get rid of DST? 

DST begins in March, when we move our clocks forward one hour. It ends in November, when we move our clocks back. That means from March to November, you get an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings. And that extra hour means you can go to soccer practice after school, have dinnertime barbecues, and hang out with friends in the evenings—all with the sun still shining.

And that time outside is good for your health. Studies show that being outdoors relieves stress, lowers the risk of depression, and improves memory. Sunshine provides vitamin D, which brightens your mood and supports bone health.

But DST also presents a major health drawback for kids and teens—and it has to do with sleep.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, only 15 percent of teens get the recommended 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night. Part of the problem is that starting around age 11, your body’s internal clock changes. You feel like going to bed several hours later than you used to. But you still have to be up early for school. As a result, many teens are chronically sleep-deprived.

The beginning of DST makes that sleep deprivation worse. The clock says it’s 7 a.m., but to your body, it feels like 6 a.m. Of course, most kids adjust to the time change after a few days.

Today, DST is observed in 70 countries. In the U.S., it is observed in every state except Hawaii and parts of Arizona.

But DST hasn’t been around that long. In the U.S., DST got its start during World War I (1914-1918). The government thought it would conserve energy for the war effort. With an extra hour of sunlight each evening, the government reasoned, Americans wouldn’t use as much electricity to light their homes.

Whether DST actually did save energy—and whether it does now—is up for debate. Today, some studies show that in certain places, we do use less electricity during DST, but in other places we do not.

Even if DST does cut down on energy usage, it may not be good for the environment overall—at least not in modern times. In 1919, most people traveled on foot or by horse. Today, we mostly drive. So to enjoy that extra hour of sunlight, we often get in a car and drive somewhere, using gas we wouldn’t otherwise use.

While DST’s impact on the environment is uncertain, it does have some clear benefits. Some studies show that though car accidents spike right after DST begins, the number of car accidents overall declines during DST. One reason is that people aren’t driving in the dark at the end of the day, when most accidents occur. Crime rates plummet too because streets stay lighter later.

So what do you think? Should we keep changing our clocks, or is it time to leave time alone?

* The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research

This article was originally published in the March 2020 issue.