Daylight Savings Time should stop being practiced
It’s that time of year again, and I don’t just mean the holiday season.
The time of year came upon us when we had to remind each other to change the hour of our clocks back an hour in recognition of Daylight Savings Time.
An idea conceived by Benjamin Franklin, the purpose of the bi-yearly event is to make better use of natural light and to conserve energy.
More 70 countries around the world use the system, but its popularity has been continually waning. The potential negative side effects and limited benefits make many question whether it’s worth the effort.
The world should collectively stop practicing Daylight Savings Time. The changing of clocks may be causing more problems than what it’s worth.
In developing countries, dairy farmers protest that milking and collection is a challenge when the hours vary.
People who leave their homes when it is still dark in the mornings expose themselves to crime and traffic accidents.
Religious observers argue that they cannot practice certain prayer rituals when the hours vary.
The TV industry notices annual losses in viewership when the clocks change.
Additionally, one economist has estimated that the act of changing clocks and devices back and forth denotes $1.7 billion of lost opportunity cost.
Even one hour can make a big difference on your body.
Your inner Circadian rhythm and immune system both come into play when messing with the time.
The majority of the population suffers from drastically decreased productivity, decreased quality of life, increased susceptibility to illness and increased sleep deprivation. The change can even go so far as to increasing a risk of a heart attack in the spring by 10 percent.
No wonder a Rasmussen Report from March 2013 found that only 37 percent of Americans surveyed thought Daylight Savings Time is worth the hassle.
The process is not as energy-efficient as it should be. The energy conserved depends on geographical location in respect to the equator, as seasons of differing hours of sunlight vary.
In the modern age, a practice such as Earth Hour, an annual event occurring in thousands of cities each spring since 2007 by turning off nonessential lights for one hour, is more effective in saving energy and shrinking our carbon footprint.
Daylight Savings Time seems like a relatively straightforward concept that many have come to accept, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be open to beneficial change.
In a generation driven by societal innovation, outdated practices are now being brought under the spotlight and reevaluated. Daylight Savings Time needs to be one of those practices evaluated.
