“Daylight Saving Time (DST) transitions,” researchers wrote in Brain Sciences earlier this year, “act as a population-wide circadian stressor, leading to sleep disruption, cognitive impairment, emotional dysregulation, and short-term increases in psychiatric symptoms, including depression, anxiety, and suicidality. … At the population level, findings support growing calls to reconsider or eliminate seasonal clock changes …”
We already knew that, though, didn’t we? Twice a year, every year, for more than a century now, most Americans “spring forward” or “fall back,” pretending that an hour has been deleted from, or inserted into, our sleep schedules.
Our bodies spend weeks adjusting to each “new normal,” leading to, among other things, measurable increases in traffic fatalities.
The practice never made much sense, even back before cheaper, more reliable lighting in factories and higher daytime productivity on farms. It stopped making any sense at all decades ago as shift and store schedules moved further and further away from “9 to 5” and toward “24/7/365.”
US president Donald Trump wants the government to knock off its weird time-shifting magic routine. Some Trump-watchers even suggest that he cares enough to make it one of his “loyalty test” issues, punishing politicians who don’t toe the line.
Therefore, Congress will likely vote on something called the “Sunshine Protection Act” later this summer.
Here’s where the usual quibbling starts:
The Sunshine Protection Act would put the United States permanently on “Daylight Saving Time” rather than “Daylight Standard Time,” meaning the sun would be out “later” rather than “earlier” according to our clocks.
Some people (for example, those who enjoy, or have businesses catering to, outdoor activities that people tend to do after, not before, work) want it that way.
Others (for example, people who don’t want their kids leaving home for school in the dark, and some doctors who think darker wake times are worse for circadian rhythms in those who have to be up early) want it the other way around.
My own preference: Pick one — either one is fine — and stick to it year-round.
Let America’s 340 million people work the rest out for ourselves, just like we do with pretty much everything else.
There’s no reason employers and employees, schools and parents, doctors and patients, stores and customers can’t adapt to whatever schedules meet their mutual needs … and change those schedules from time to time (see what I did there?), if it makes sense TO THEM, with no need for the government’s input at all.
It’s bad enough that we tolerate the US government’s existence. It’s even worse that we allow the US government to tell us what time it is. Let it hop back and forth on the matter? Just no.
Thank you, President Trump, for your attention to this matter!
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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