Sunday was Daylight Savings Day, the bad one where we spring forward an hour. I know some people like having more time in the sun to participate in activities, but it can have lasting effects on the human body. The origins of Daylight Savings can be traced back to the 18th century when Benjamin Franklin proposed the idea for a way to reduce costs on candles to light his home at night. This day wasn’t fully implemented until World War 1 when it was used to save energy for military power. This strategy was implemented for the second World War for the same cause of saving energy. It was during this time people saw the benefits of this change in how we graph the events of our day.

In 1966, the government passed the Uniform Time Act that if a state wanted to adapt Daylight Savings, it would have to apply it to all of its cities and counties. While this was beneficial to that era of that world, this era of the world has many different problems and issues regarding how Daylight Savings effects today’s people. Studies show that taking an hour out of a person’s day can greatly have an impact on their physical and mental health. Mathew Solan, for Harvard Medical Center, said that the Monday after daylight savings a person gets 40 minutes less sleep than they do compared to other nights of the year. This leads to a 6% increase in car crashes and endangerment. It also leads to an increase of tiredness, anxiety, depression and seasonal affective disorder.

Changing time in the spring is shown to be the more disruptive of the two time changes. With spring having a more impacting effect on our body’s functions such as sleep, appetite and mood. A 2022 poll has provided information that DST is favored of being ended by 61% of the American population. A bill to eliminate the time change has been introduced but unfortunately has not been made into a law in the past three Congressional Sessions. I, for one, am hoping this bill be made into a law because I just hate losing an hour of my day, especially on a Sunday because that is the dusk before the dark for me and I like to enjoy it as much as possible.