BY SAVANNAH KEYSER
“Spring forward, fall back.”
Daylight Savings is the practice of advancing the clocks by one hour at the start of spring, so that evening daylight lasts for an hour longer than normal.
“Daylight savings is pointless,” junior Maya Smilen said. “It’s really hard to adjust to, and it doesn’t even have a purpose anymore.”
Contrary to popular belief, Daylight Savings was not intended, in the United States, to benefit farmers; it was actually introduced during World War I in an attempt to save energy for the war. After the war, the American government did away with DST, but brought it back during WWII for the same reasons. The US government, once again, eliminated the practice after the war, but the states were at liberty to practice it if they so wanted. Time passed and in 1966 the Uniform Time Act was introduced which mandated that DST was practiced nationwide. Since then, there have been minor alterations to the act, but DST has remained in practice since the law was put into effect in 1967.
Now that we live in a society that doesn’t rely on the sun as its main source of light and heat, there is no reason that we should be trying to save energy by lengthening the amount of usable daylight hours. The whole reason that they were trying to save daylight was to save the resources needed to provide artificial light and heat for the armed forces, such as coal. Now that we have the means necessary to have light and heat when the sun goes down, like light bulbs and air conditioning, there is really no substance to the argument that DST should still be a practiced system.
Not only does DST not have many benefits anymore, it seems to have more disadvantages in this day and age. The body relies on its circadian rhythms to regulate sleep cycles and other bodily functions; when the time change takes place, the body does not know that it happened and continues to run on its normal rhythms. Because of this, it takes someone anywhere from a few day to almost two week or longer for their body to adjust. This can cause problems in productivity at work or school and in getting to those places in the morning.
“It’s too dark in the morning,” senior Kaylee Surgoine said. “It makes it much harder to drive to school in those conditions.”
Not only is it hard to drive, it is also hard to wake up while it is still dark outside. During DST, the sun doesn’t start coming up until about 7:15, which means that it’s pretty much pitch black outside while most people are waking up and getting ready for school or work, as opposed to normal time where the sun begins to rise at about 6:15. The reason that this has such an effect on the human ability to wake up is because biologically, the body likes to rise with the sun; it is easier to wake up when it is light outside because your body knows that you are supposed to be awake when the sun is out. People tend to be sluggish when they are tired and this can affect their productivity and how much work they get done throughout the day just because they woke up at a different time than their body is used to.
Humans are creatures of habit and daylight savings goes completely against keeping a routine. It throws off people all over the world and in return, all it does is give an extra hour of daylight in the evening instead of the morning. There really isn’t any reason that we should continue to observe this pointless time change in the world that we live in today. When fall comes around, let’s fall back, and stay back for the rest of time.
