OAfter a recent trip to Tucson, I heard no complaints about losing an hour of sleep. On March 10, 2024 - when most clocks across the country will move forward an hour for daylight saving time - no one in that city will be wondering how to adjust the time on their microwave or car dashboard. And as leaders of nearby states, including my home state of Washington, hold hearings on whether to abandon the outdated practice of moving forward and backsliding-with fiercely opposing views on how to lock the clock-the leaders have of Arizona has no need for that. The state has been running on standard time since 1968.
Most of us are ready to repeat the biennial dance. Research shows that changing our clocks not only causes us annoyance, but also a large number of health and safety problems. The polls show that we broadly agree that we should stop. In fact, Congress is allowing us, and scientific and medical experts are imploring us, to follow the example of Arizona and Hawaii and ditch daylight saving time in favor of full-time standard time. Yet here we are, still playing with our bells, with no end to the practice in sight.
In recent weeks, Oregon and Washington eschewed their respective permanent standard time laws. Other states continue to debate similar bills - all of which appear to have been introduced out of impatience. Oregon and Washington are among more than a dozen states that have already passed legislation for the more publicly popular year-round daylight saving time. But that step is contingent on Congress changing federal law to allow it. And the momentum has slowed. The latest version of the Sunshine Protection Act, which was close to passage in 2022, has fewer cosponsors. The question 'What time is it?' has become a political hot potato.
It's time to cut through this bickering and shift the conversation from the clocks on our walls and wrists to the clocks within us.
A symphony of little timekeepers ticks through your entire body - metaphorically of course. Circadian clocks keep time everywhere, from your liver and lungs to your nose and toes. They rely on the planet's predictable patterns to stay harmonized and in turn keep your brain and body functioning optimally. The most powerful of these signals is the rising and setting sun. Looking for bright mornings and dark evenings ensures that your daily rhythm of alertness, metabolism and strength, among other aspects of your physiology, peaks at the right times. Standard time helps us achieve both. It concentrates daylight hours earlier. Scientists have even estimated the impact of assigning that controversial hour to morning versus evening by comparing people living on opposite time zone boundaries. On the West Side, where sunrise occurs at a later time, studies find lower wages and higher rates of cancer, suicide and car accidents. That extra hour of natural light at night on the west side also robs people of an average of 19 minutes of sleep per night. Jumping forward an hour mimics a movement from the east to the west border of a time zone and exacerbates the shortages of those already there. Yet observing daylight saving time is far from the only key we throw into our biological clockwork.
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Read more: Daylight saving time is the worstOn average, Americans and Europeans spend more than 90% of their time indoors - under artificial lighting that is orders of magnitude dimmer than sunlight and orders of magnitude brighter than moonlight. We eat, work and play at all hours of the day and night. Modern life mutes crucial time signals, blurs the boundaries of day and night and confuses our internal clocks. This disruption may be invisible to us, but the consequences can be profound. They range from poor sleep, reduced productivity and altered mood to greater risks of weight gain, digestive disorders and heart disease.
Fortunately, the burgeoning field of circadian science points to surprisingly simple solutions to our broken inner clocks. As individuals, we can go out in the morning. Even 20 minutes under a cloudy sky is enough. We can get closer to windows - or, if we have access to them, use new lighting systems that aim to mimic natural daylight - while staying indoors all day. We can dim our lights after the sun sets and avoid late-night snacks and drinks. As communities, we can reorient schedules around natural cycles rather than an outdated social time architecture, with the ambitious goal of making alarm clocks obsolete. We can revise or relax it if we need employees and students in the morning. Early start times are especially problematic for teens whose circadian rhythms naturally shift later. The lack of morning light, almost a given when the school bells ring before dawn, exacerbates teens' preference for staying up late. At the urging of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Medical Association, among others, a growing number of middle and high schools are now changing their start times to 8:30 a.m. or later.
These same organizations recommend introducing a permanent standard time. Because we tend to discuss the concurrent issues separately, it can be easy to overlook how permanent daylight saving time would erase the published gains in attendance, grades, and test scores resulting from delaying school start times. In Seattle, locking the clock to daylight saving time would shift the sunrise to after 8:30 a.m. for more than two months each year, negating recent clock changes at Seattle public schools. And we may have easily forgotten what it's like to endure a winter without 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 clock. The promised energy savings have never fully materialized anyway.
As we focus on our internal clocks, setting our external clocks to standard time should become a more popular and attainable goal. We may not have to go far. In the same 2023 YouGov survey that found that Americans preferred 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 when 'choosing of the optimal system'. The wording of opinion polls and bills likely distorts responses. The Sunshine Protection Act is an example of this. Alberta, Canada also narrowly voted down a referendum in October 2021 asking voters whether they wanted to adopt "summer hours."
Read more: Where the push to make daylight saving time permanent persistsUnfortunately, there is no way to extend the daylight hours in winter to resemble blissful midsummer days and nights. We cannot compensate for the tilt of the Earth. But by correcting the mismatches in messaging and understanding, we can at least begin to resolve the mismatches 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 boon to its residents' biological timekeeping. Due to its proximity to the equator - especially compared to my hometown of Seattle - day lengths are relatively consistent throughout the seasons. The days are also consistently bright and the nights consistently dark. A friend who recently moved from Seattle to Tucson said he rarely deviates from his new daily schedule of early mornings and early evenings. In the summer, Tucsonans get up early to avoid the heat. The rest of the year, he told me, it's "out of habit."
I basked in the light-dark contrasts while staying in an Airbnb on the outskirts of the city, a welcome change from dreary Seattle. I was surprised at how effortlessly I woke up on my fifth morning to join my friend's daily 7:30 a.m. breakfast meeting. 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 leading factor in his recent decision to move from California. As he reminded me, Arizona is not alone. Most countries in 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 solve it from there."
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