The morning of March 8th, 2020 may be rough for many of us. On March 8th at 2:00 AM clocks are turned ahead an hour to spring us forward. This results in an hour loss of sleep and many cranky Americans. In the moment daylight-savings may be irrational and a hassle, but we change our clocks for good reason.
We turn the clocks ahead or back an hour in order to gain more daylight. The idea of daylight-saving time was created with the intention of saving power. People would wake up while it was still dark out to begin work, but since it was dark candles would need to be lit or lights would need to be turned on. Instead, why not just change the clocks? This was a natural solution to supply people with light earlier or later in the day. Some people believe that daylight-saving time was created to benefit farmers, however, farmers were not a fan of this idea. Changing time forward or back threw the animals off of schedule and resulted in the farmer and his tasks bring thrown off as well.
Not every state in the U.S springs forward or falls back and many people are trying to eliminate this in their states altogether. Arizona and Hawaii are two states that do not change their clocks. Hawaii has little change between winter and summer daylight hours and Arizona has not followed daylight-saving time since the 1960s. Some people believe there is no use for daylight saving time anymore because electricity and cars make it easier for us to be up and traveling at all hours. Daylight-savings time doesn’t look to be going anywhere this year, so be prepared to wake up to what feels like an hour earlier and enjoy the extra daylight.
-Emma Zimmerman
