Weird Things You Didn't Know About Daylight Saving Time
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Daylight Saving Time is almost here, which means you have to set your clock forward one hour before going to bed, and you "lose" an hour of sleep. (Ugh!) But why do we do this whole time shift, anyway? It turns out it's way more complicated than you may think. Here's what you need to know about "springing forward" and "falling back."
Daylight Saving Time begins on Sunday, March 12, 2023, and then ends on Sunday, November 5, 2023.
Set your clocks! The change will take place at 2 a.m. on those spring and fall mornings. Daylight Saving Time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November each year.
Speaking of, why 2 a.m.?
The thought behind the early-morning swap is pretty simple: According to LiveScience, most people are expected to already be at home and in bed, and that time won't bother many bars or restaurants. It also likely doesn't affect those who have early shifts at work.
Wait: I thought it was Daylight Savings Time.
It sounds odd, but Daylight Saving Time is the correct phrasing. (Though we can understand why it feels confusing.)
No, it wasn't started to help farmers.
In fact, according to National Geographic, farmers had a lobby that campaigned aggressively against Daylight Saving Time. That's because it gave them one less hour in the sunlight to send their crops to market. To this day, many farmers don't like it, especially because cows like to be milked on a schedule and moving the clocks disrupts that. Farmers in the U.S. lobbied successfully to stop Daylight Saving Time after World War I, and it wouldn't go back into effect until the next world war.
It started in Europe.
Time reports that in 1907, William Willet wrote a book called The Waste of Daylight, arguing for a Daylight Saving Time. “The sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we are asleep," he wrote, but there “remains only a brief spell of declining daylight in which to spend the short period of leisure at our disposal.” Willet lobbied Parliament for the change, saying it would increase people's enjoyment of sunlight and also save money on fuel, but it wasn't passed there until after his death.
People think it may help conserve energy.
Between January 1974 and April 1975, the entire country went on Daylight Saving Time year-round to combat the energy crisis. And in 2005, Congress passed a law that extended Daylight Saving Time by a month to keep energy costs down. But the Washington Post reports that a study found that it really only saves a tiny fraction of our electric bills at best, especially since if you stay indoors, you're more likely to run your air conditioning.
It's more recent than you think.
Benjamin Franklin is credited with coming up with the idea in 1784, and Germany was the first country to try it out in 1916. President Woodrow Wilson first made it law in 1918, but it was repealed seven months later, the Chicago Tribune reports. Though President Franklin D. Roosevelt relaunched it in 1942, the time change wasn't official until 1966, when President Lyndon Johnson signed a law to make the start and end dates of Daylight Saving Time uniform across the country.
Not everyone observes it.
Arizona (except for the Navajo Nation), Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands don't recognize Daylight Saving Time. Parts of Indiana didn't as well until it was adopted statewide in 2006. Several state legislatures have tried to abandon the time change in recent years. And around the world, only 70 countries actually observe it, according to CNN. A majority of U.S. states have considered legislation to permanently adopt Daylight Saving Time. In the last five years, 19 states have enacted legislation or passed resolutions in favor of year-round Daylight Saving Time: Colorado, Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Idaho, Louisiana, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, Delaware, Maine, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, and Florida.
In March 2022, the Senate unanimously voted to pass the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021. The bill allows for moving time one hour forward from what the federal government considers standard time, beginning in November 2023. However, the bill must be passed by the House and signed into law by the President, and neither has happened just yet.
It might be bad for your health.
According to The Atlantic, the time shift might be detrimental to people who suffer from seasonal affective disorder, a depression that kicks in when the seasons change. That's because it changes your sleep cycle, and it turns out that change could even be linked to higher risks of heart attacks, car accidents, and even malfunctioning medical equipment.
But it could cut down on crime.
A study by the Brookings Institute has shown that Daylight Saving Time reduces robberies, which tend to happen more under the cover of darkness. With more light in the early evening when people head home from work, there are likely fewer threats.
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