I woke up Sunday morning, reaching for my clock, only to be baffled by the time. It was 6 a.m., a whole hour earlier than I expected. Disoriented, I fell back asleep only to find out that 6 a.m. was a “perfectly fine time” to get up on a weekend. I hadn’t realized that Daylight Saving Time had begun that day; my body’s clock was a whole hour ahead, and stumbling through the day made me want to live in Arizona, where the clocks stay as they are rather than changing because of some stupid rule made back in World War I. I would have cherished the extra hour had I not somehow been more tired than ever despite getting the same amount of sleep I always get. Cursing the inventor of Daylight Saving Time, I couldn’t help but wonder why it still exists at all.
Daylight Saving Time (or DST) was first implemented in 1916 during World War I to conserve fuel and power, which were desperately needed at the time. It also extended the workday by allowing people to work much later with additional light. In addition, the switch was made at 2 a.m. so that workers, especially railroad workers, wouldn’t be disrupted during their work, which, although long, didn’t extend past 2 a.m. A common misconception is that DST was invented for farmers so they could grow crops and raise livestock better by having more daylight to do so. The fact is, like us non-farmers, they absolutely despised the thing. It disrupted their schedules and routines, thereby interfering with their hard work of producing products for the rest of us to eat. Back when DST was first introduced, they lobbied against it vigorously, and eventually got their wish after the war was over; the clock-switching stopped when the fighting stopped, and everyone was happy until the next World War, when DST was reintroduced to, again, save fuel and conserve energy. After that war, however, it wasn’t scrapped in the United States; it just turned the whole thing into a clock-changing mess. From 1945 to 1966, the states engaged in a bit of a free for all with their time, choosing to use DST or forget it, letting their counties and localities have free reign over the time as well, sometimes changing their minds about it in the middle of the year, or re-instituting one a decade after they had rid it from their agenda… it was a mess. At one point, Iowa had 23 different start and end times for DST. The time differences were random and odd, and divided people who ordinarily wouldn’t have to account for an hour’s difference when walking down the street into another county. Even broadcasting companies were bamboozled by all the different times they had to keep up with. Then, in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized the time! However, there was one catch: it kept DST. Only two states, Arizona and Hawai’i, opted out, keeping Standard Time instead. For them, their geography was their destiny; being states with lots of sunshine and light, an extra hour of summer heat made no sense. Apart from those two states, the energy conservation law from the World Wars had weaseled its way into America, and the only time it was ever useful was in 1974, when an energy crisis necessitated permanent DST, although public outcry eventually repealed it. Ever since then, there has never been a concrete answer for why we keep this wartime artifact, and the reasons for eliminating it are many.
My disorientation was not singular- many Americans were feeling the effects of DST as they woke up an hour earlier than usual. To regulate sleep, we have circadian rhythms, which keep us on a strict schedule, telling us to sleep if we stay up too late and having us wake up at a learned time. DST, however, interrupts these rhythms, shifting them by a whole hour, leaving our bodies supremely confused. As a result, sleep regulation goes out the window, and we’re left very tired for the next few days. Not only is DST harmful to our sleep, but it can also be harmful to our health. Driving while drunk is never good, and is downright illegal, but driving while sleepy and disoriented is just as bad. Primarily in the spring, fatal car crashes increase by 6% after the switch. Outside of the vehicle, heart attacks also see a spike on the Monday after the switch. And long-term sleep deprivation effects, like depression and heart disease, are also very real dangers if one never fully acclimates to the time change. Of course, most people’s bodies handle the change well enough that these problems aren’t major, but they’re still very real possibilities. Ironically, DST was introduced to conserve energy, but instead, it’s taking energy away from humans!
So if DST wasn’t for the farmers, isn’t for the soldiers anymore, and definitely isn’t for the health of the people… why do we have it? I can only think it happens to be the laziness of the government that keeps this thing going, because sleep scientists, farmers and everyday Americans have been advocating for a change ever since it was implemented back in 1916. Mostly, it seems like those who could help to pass legislation against DST can’t decide what time we should stick to: the original time we use from November to March, or the invented time we use for the rest of the year. More than a century later, we still feel its effects in the form of one very groggy Sunday.
