Daylight savings is a flawed attempt to improve the environment, unintentionally leading to nothing but sleeplessness and misery. The practice of daylight savings involves moving a clock one hour in advance for the summer months, and bringing it back to normal in the winter. According to USAFacts, Daylight Savings Time (DST) was invented by Benjamin Franklin “in 1918…to help conserve fuel and power during World War I.” Nowadays, it is kept in place to conserve energy and make better use of natural sunlight. But does daylight savings really practice what it preaches? English teacher Mr. Gully makes the argument that “it is a waste because it’s a major transition for both public, private, and government’s military life.”
As many of us know, daylight savings steals an hour of our sleep every March like clockwork. We wake up drowsy and angry, and it takes an entire week to adjust to the lost hour in our schedule. For many high school students, this affects their performance in school. According to CDC.gov, “children and adolescents who do not get enough sleep have a higher risk for many health problems, [which lead to] poor performance in school.” Not to mention, making the shift can increase health risks, especially in older people. PhD sleep expert Adam Spira states that there are “adverse health consequences from changing the clocks, including heart attacks and strokes.”
The drastic sunset change due to daylight savings impacts people’s health, often negatively. In the winter, the sun sets as early as 5 PM. Such a drastic change from the summer months leave people shocked at the darkening sky when some haven’t even left school. According to Mayo Clinic, “The reduced level of sunlight in fall and winter may cause winter-onset SAD (seasonal affective disorder). This decrease in sunlight may disrupt your body’s internal clock and lead to feelings of depression.” For many students, winter is already a busy time. With the looming possibility of seasonal depression and finals, the winter months become unbearable.
Computer science teacher Ms. Hardy discussed her childhood growing up in Oregon, where the sun was still up late at night due to daylight savings, recalling that “in the summer, there were so many kids that would be allowed out late at night…I was told I had to go to bed.” The unnaturalness of the dark mornings no doubt disrupted circadian rhythms, creating more harm than good. Ms. Hardy points out the uselessness of daylight savings, agreeing that she does not believe it truly helps the environment or conserve energy.
Believing our use of energy increases only in the dark hours is a primitive perspective in the age of air conditioning and heaters. There is no concrete evidence that daylight savings truly helps the environment, especially when people consume energy regardless of the season. A study done by students at Yale University revealed that “contrary to the policy’s intent, DST increases electricity demand. [There is a] trade-off between reducing demand for lighting and increasing demand for heating and cooling.”
The biggest issue is The Sunshine Protection Act, a bill meant to be passed in the fall of 2023, advocating for permanent daylight savings time. According to NPR, the government’s biggest reason for this policy is an economic one: “the idea is that having more light in the evenings encourages people to go out and do things — i.e., spend money.” However, our bodies need light in the mornings to function. Switching to permanent daylight savings time disrupts our circadian rhythms and leads us to spend our mornings in darkness, with no motivation to get out of bed.
