Daylight Savings Time is coming up; on Saturday March 8 we’ll all lose 60 minutes of sleep as our clocks spring forward. Many people will groan about our loss of beauty sleep—especially us Geneseo college students, where sleep deprivation is part of our daily culture.
That’s not to say that DST exists only to deprive you of sleep. It is believed that Benjamin Franklin first proposed the idea in a letter he wrote to the editor of the Journal of Paris, where he remarked that the Parisians could “...economize candle usage by getting people out of bed earlier in the morning.” Franklin, however, meant it as a joke, according to Time and Date AS. A century and a half later, DST was used in World War I to keep the use of artificial lighting at a minimum to save fuel for the war effort. This was popularized by major European countries such as Britain and Germany during the war, but they scrapped it after the war ended.
The practice re-emerged in many European countries during World War II and continued after the war ended. The United States standardized the system in 1966 with the passing of the Uniform Time Act, which required DST to begin at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in April (clocks would turn forward an hour) and end on the last Sunday in October (clocks turn back an hour). In 2005, President George W. Bush extended DST, having it start on the second Sunday of March and end on the first Sunday of November. This went into effect in 2007 and is still in effect today.
But is DST still relevant? In my opinion, it’s pretty useless in our world today. While its original purpose was to conserve energy, current research is mixed on whether it actually does result in energy conservation and some studies have found that it actually raises energy consumption.
Further, DST also has many negative consequences. It is never easy to adjust to the new time, and it is especially difficult to lose that cherished hour of sleep. Hard as it may be to believe, it has been reported that workplace accidents and car accidents increase when the time changes each year, especially when we are forced to spring forward. The change in time has also been linked to illness and depression. It is very difficult to leave for school or work in the dark and return from school or work in that same darkness. In mid-to-late December, the sun rises around 7:14 a.m. and sets around 4:30 p.m. During that time period, many people never see the light of day.
Knowing this, what do I think we should do about it? My vote is to spring our clocks forward on Saturday and then never fall back again.
Freshman, undeclared and most of my fun facts come from Snapple bottle caps (hey that kind of rhymed).