Daylight Savings Time – Keep it or Discard it?

On Sunday, 11-5-23, daylight savings time ended in 48 states, and we returned to our regular standard time. Two states, Arizona and Hawaii, do not observe daylight savings time.

Benjamin Franklin advocated the idea in 1784. It was formally adopted during WWI in an attempt to conserve energy. There is controversy as to whether it does. And some experts believe that extending the use of daylight hours at the end of the day may actually increase the use of heating or air conditioning, thus increasing the use of electrical energy.

There are those who advocate for keeping daylight savings time in use continuously. There are those who would leave the system the way it is. And there are some who would discard daylight savings time altogether.

Besides the confusion of changing times, there are concerns for the health effects of changing back and forth.

 Many articles proclaim the adverse effects of daylight savings time. Here’s a link to an article from Johns Hopkins from March of this year.

And here are two paragraphs from the article:

LESS SLEEP MEANS MORE HEALTH RISKS.

“Moving the clocks forward in the spring results in going to sleep and waking up before our internal clocks are ready for us to. This misalignment lasts for the duration of DST,” Spira says, “and can reduce the amount of sleep we’re able to get, to the detriment of our health.”

“The consequences of insufficient sleep include decreases in cardiovascular health, increases in diabetes and obesity, poorer mental health, lower cognitive performance, and an increase in the risk of motor vehicle accidents,” he says.

So, today’s questions:

• Does changing back and forth to daylight savings time affect your reading or writing habits, ability to focus and concentrate, or your mental well-being?
• Are you in favor of leaving the system the way it is or staying on either standard time or daylight savings time continuously?