Courtesy of Alexas Fotos

Living Madly: What Time is It?

By Emilie-Noelle Provost

Contrary to popular belief, Daylight Savings Time was not created by, or to help, farmers. In fact, when Daylight Savings Time was first adopted in the United States, farmers were among its most vocal opponents. After all, the last thing farmers, and their livestock, want is to have their schedules disrupted.

Germany was the first country to adopt Daylight Savings Time on a nationwide basis, in April 1916, as part of an effort to reduce energy consumption during the First World War. The U.S. followed suit, in March 1918, when the Standard Time Act, which also established the country’s time zones, was passed by Congress.

But it wasn’t until 1966, when the Uniform Time Act was passed, that the United States standardized beginning and end dates for Daylight Savings Time. Prior to that, the implementation of DST was left up to the individual states, which made things like traveling by air confusing.

Then, in 2007, with the aim of further reducing energy use, the Energy Policy Act took effect, moving the start of DST to the second Sunday in March from its previous beginning on the first Sunday in April. The law also moved up DST’s end date from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November.

I know there are a lot of people who look forward to the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, and who were happy about the 2007 changes, but I have to say I agree with the farmers.

I’ve always thought of Daylight Savings Time as an overreaching government-imposed construct, one that no citizen had the opportunity to vote for or against. With the exception of forcing the collective population of the United States to lose an hour of sleep, and generally making everyone late for work or school for at least a week or two, in my opinion, Daylight Savings Time accomplishes nothing.

I don’t care how light out it is at 7 p.m. (because it’s not really 7 p.m.). I’d much prefer to get back the hour of sleep of which I was deprived so I wouldn’t be forced to drag my butt around like a zombie until Easter.

According to a 2008 study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, DST only reduces energy consumption by about 0.34 percent. In fact, the study found that DST actually escalates electricity use by about 1 percent during the summer months because of an increased use of air conditioning in the late afternoon and evening. Daylight Savings Time was also found to cause an increase in the use of both heating and electricity in the winter and early spring, due to us all having to be functional an hour earlier, when it’s both darker and colder.

Choose Energy, a nonprofit that provides information to help people save on energy costs, reported, in 2024, that implementing Daylight Savings Time as a way to conserve electricity is now unnecessary thanks to modern LED lighting, which is far more energy efficient than the incandescent bulbs that were used when DST was first adopted.

There’s also evidence that Daylight Savings Time is bad for our health. In February 2020, the scientific journal Current Biology reported that Daylight Savings Time causes an acute 6 percent increase in the risk of fatal traffic accidents due to morning grogginess, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the “DST Effect.”

According to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the sleep deprivation caused by DST, which results not only from getting up earlier but from difficulty getting to sleep at night due to increased light levels, carries a number of serious health implications. These include an increased risk of stroke and heart attack, elevated cortisol levels, and even suicide.

In spite of all this, in recent years—for some confounding reason—there has been a push to make DST permanent in several states (hello, health and auto insurance companies). The federal Sunshine Protection Act, which would make DST permanent across the U.S., was introduced, in January 2025, by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The bill has yet to come to a vote, and I’m really hoping it never does.

For now, at least, I can still look forward to the first Sunday in November (one of the most glorious days of the year), after which I will finally be able to recover my lost hours of sleep.

###

Emilie-Noelle Provost (she/her) – Author of The River Is Everywhere, a National Indie Excellence Award, American Fiction Award, and American Legacy Award finalist, and The Blue Bottle, a middle-grade adventure with sea monsters. Visit her at emilienoelleprovost.com.