Set Your Clocks Back Tonight—And No, Daylight Saving Time Isn’t Going Away Yet

Topline

Americans will set their clocks back Sunday morning as daylight saving time comes to an end—even as a national debate gains steam over whether the longstanding tradition of switching between daylight saving and standard time should be eliminated, and if daylight should be permanently pushed back the extra hour.

Daylight saving time ends Sunday, as lawmakers debate whether the tradition should be abolished or … [+] made permanent.

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Key Facts

At 2 a.m. Sunday, clocks in the U.S. will revert to standard time, turning back one hour and giving Americans an extra hour of sleep that night, but shifting sunrise and sunset an hour earlier and ushering in four-plus months of darker winter evenings.

In March, the Senate approved the bipartisan Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent, extending daylight longer into the evening between November and March in exchange for darker winter mornings—but the bill has stalled in the House.

The bill, which would apply to every state except Hawaii and Arizona—an outlier in the daylight savings arena, observing year-round standard time—is the latest attempt at longer evenings, with proponents, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who introduced the bill, arguing it would reduce crime, improve rush-hour traffic safety and encourage kids to play outside longer.

Critics of the semi-annual switch also point out the process of changing the clocks twice a year has been linked to increases in traffic accidents, robberies, workplace injuries and heart attacks in the days that follow the shift—a 2004 study published in Accident, Analysis and Prevention also found permanent daylight saving would decrease vehicle deaths by more than 350 per year.

Lawmakers in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Washington have proposed bills to make daylight saving time permanent, although none of those bills have received Congressional approval—the Uniform Time Act allows states to exempt themselves from daylight saving time—which Arizona did (with the exception of the Navajo Nation) in 1968—but forbids states from remaining on permanent daylight saving time without congressional approval.

Chief Critic

Scientists studying sleep warn a transition to permanent daylight saving time could disrupt Americans’ circadian rhythms as midday sunlight is pushed back from noon to 1 p.m. The result, according to a 2019 study in the Journal of Health Economics, is that people’s “social and biological time” drift apart, creating a phenomenon known as “social jetlag,” while overall sleep time decreases by an average of 19 minutes, and impairs sleep quality. According to University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School-Baystate professor Karin Johnson, that could increase the risk of health problems, including obesity, diabetes and heart disease, NBC News reported.

Big Number

63%. That’s the share of U.S. adults surveyed in an American Academy of Sleep Medicine survey last July that want to eliminate seasonal time changes, including 38% who strongly support eliminating it.

Key Background

Although the debate over daylight saving time is almost as old as the practice itself, it’s facing renewed criticism as lawmakers attempt to do away with standard time altogether. The semi-annual changing of the clocks began in 1918 as an initiative to save fuel, give shoppers extra time after work, although federal officials left it up to state and local lawmakers to decide when they should reset their clocks, and whether they do it at all—creating a completely nonuniform nationwide time system. Congress standardized the practice in 1966, with former President Lyndon B. Johnson approving the Uniform Time Act, following through on three years of planning from the Committee for Time Uniformity. In 1996, Congress amended the Uniform Time Act, extending daylight saving time by bringing the start date up nearly one month, from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March while pushing the end date from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November. Recently, however, a bipartisan group of lawmakers are once again trying to change America’s time. In a statement last year, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who supports the Sunshine Protection Act, argued permanent daylight saving time “positively impacts consumer spending and shifts energy consumption,” while Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said “I don’t know a parent of a young child that would oppose getting rid of springing forward or falling back.”

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Key Facts

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Big Number

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