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ohon recent trips to Tucson, I heard no complaints about an hour of lost sleep. On March 10, 2024—when most clocks across the country will go forward one hour for daylight saving time—no one in that city will struggle to remember what time it is. to adjust their microwaves or car dashboards. And as leaders of neighboring states, including my home state of Washington, hold hearings on whether to end the antiquated practice of springing forward and falling back — with fierce opinions on the way to lock down the clock – Arizona’s leaders have no need. The state has been on standard time since 1968.
Most of the rest of us are ready to do the biennial dance again. Research tells us that changing clocks causes us many health and safety problems, on top of the worries. The polls tell us that we widely agree that we should stop it. Even Congress gives us the go-ahead, and scientific and medical experts want us to continue Arizona and Hawaii’s lead and opt out of daylight saving time in favor of full-time standard time. But, here we are still fiddling with our clocks, with no end to the practice in sight.
In the past few weeks, Oregon and Washington have been shy of advancing their respective permanent standard-time legislation. Other states continue to debate similar bills—all apparently introduced out of impatience. Oregon and Washington are among more than a dozen states that have already passed daylight savings time legislation that is publicly demanded year-round. But that measure is dependent on Congress changing federal law to allow it. And momentum is wan. The latest iteration of the Sunshine Protection Act, almost passed in 2022, has fewer correspondents. A question of “What time is it?’ now a political hot potato.
It’s time to break from this blog and shift the conversation from the clocks on our walls and wrists to the clocks within us.
A symphony of tiny timers ticks – metaphorically, of course – all over your body. Circadian clocks keep time everywhere from your liver and lungs to your nose and toes. They rely on predictable planetary patterns to stay in harmony and, in turn, to keep your brain and body running optimally. The most powerful of these cues is the rising and setting sun. Seeking bright mornings and dark evenings helps your daily rhythms of alertness, metabolism and strength, among other aspects of your physiology, peak at the right times. Standard time helps us achieve both. It focuses on earlier daylight hours. Scientists have even estimated the impact of allocating that controversial hour to morning and evening by comparing people who live on opposite edges of time zones. On the west side, where sunrise occurs later than an hour on the wall, studies find lower wages and higher rates of cancer, suicide and car accidents. That extra hour of natural light at night in the west robs more people of an average of 19 minutes of sleep each night. Springing forward one hour mimics a move from the eastern edge to the western edge of a time zone and will increase the deficits of those already there. Still, observing daylight saving time is far from the only key we use in our biological clockworks.
Read more: Daylight Saving Time is the worst
On average, Americans and Europeans spend more than 90% of their time indoors – under artificial light that is orders of magnitude brighter than sunlight and orders of magnitude brighter than moonlight. We eat, work and play at all hours of the day and night. Modern life blurs the tell-tale signs of time, blurs the boundaries of day and night, and confuses our internal clocks. This interference may be invisible to us, but the consequences can be profound. They range from poor sleep, reduced productivity, and altered mood to increased risks of weight gain, digestive disorders, and heart disease.
Fortunately, the growing field of circadian science reveals surprisingly simple solutions to our broken inner clocks. As individuals, we can get outside in the morning. There will be even 20 minutes under a cloudy sky. We can gravitate closer to the windows—or, if we have access, use new lighting systems that aim to mimic natural daylight—while indoors during the day. We can dim our lights after the sun goes down and avoid late night snacks or drinks. As communities, we can reorient schedules around natural cycles rather than an outdated social time architecture, with the ambitious goal of eliminating alarm clocks. We can review or rest when we need to reach employees and students in the morning. Early start times are particularly problematic for teenagers whose circadian rhythms naturally drift later. The absence of morning light, almost like the ringing of school bells before sunrise, worsens the prospect of teenagers staying up late. At the urging of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Medical Association, among other organizations, an increasing number of middle and high schools are changing their start times to 8:30 am or later.
These same organizations recommend adopting permanent standard time. Because we tend to discuss the concurrent issues in isolation, however, it’s easy for us to forget how permanent daylight saving time would wipe out the gains in attendance, grades, and test scores that have been revealed from delaying times. school start. In Seattle, daylight saving time would lock the clock until after 8:30 am for more than two months of the year – a reversal of recent clock changes by Seattle public schools. And we might have easily forgotten what it’s like to be winter without the morning light. The last time Americans tried permanent daylight saving time was during the energy crisis of the 1970s. That change was short lived. Concerns about the safety of children during dark winter mornings quickly forced the country to turn back the clocks. The promised energy savings were not fully realized anyway.
As we focus on our internal clocks, setting our external clocks to a standard time should become a more common and achievable goal. We may not have far to go. In the same 2023 YouGov survey that showed Americans favoring permanent daylight saving time over standard time, people still ranked healthy circadian rhythms and not forcing children to go to school in the dark as the most important values and “the choosing a better system”. The phrase polls and bills likely biased responses. The Solar Protection Act is one such case. Alberta, Canada also voted on a referendum in October 2021 asking voters if they wanted to adopt “daylight saving hours”.
Read more: Where the Pressure to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent Stands
Unfortunately, there is no way to extend the hours of daylight in winter to resemble the days and nights of midsummer. We cannot offset the Earth’s tilt. But by correcting the gaps in message and understanding, we can at least begin to resolve the discrepancies between our external and internal clocks. We can begin to recreate the consistency and contrasts that our circadian rhythms crave.
Tucson’s geography is a great aid to the residents’ biological timekeeping. Its proximity to the equator – especially compared to my hometown of Seattle – keeps the length of the day fairly consistent across the seasons. The days are also consistently bright, and the nights are consistently dark. A friend who recently moved from Seattle to Tucson said he rarely deviates from his new daily schedule of early mornings and evenings. In the summer, Tucsonans rise early to avoid the heat. The rest of the year, he told me, he is “out of habit.”
I ventured into the light-dark contrast during my stay in an Airbnb on the edge of town, which welcomed dreary Seattle. I was surprised at how easily I woke up on my fifth morning to join my friend’s daily 7:30 am breakfast meeting group. While in Tucson, I also spoke with Jay Pea, president of Save Standard Time, a nonprofit that advocates for permanent standard time. Arizona’s rejection of daylight saving time was a major factor in his recent decision to move from California. As he reminded me, Arizona is not alone. Most countries around the world do not change their clocks twice a year.
“Let’s try to define time as objectively as possible,” he told me. “We can work it out from there.”
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