Daylight Saving Time: Spring Forward

Daylight Saving Time is the practice of advancing clocks and the main purpose of it is to make better use of daylight. Regions that use daylight saving time adjust clocks forward an hour in the spring making evening daylight last longer while sacrificing normal sunrise time and adjust them backward an hour in autumn making evening daylight shorter. This causes everyone to lose an hour of sleep in the spring and gain an hour of sleep in autumn.

George Hudson proposed the idea of daylight saving in 1895. On April 30, 1916, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary organized the first nationwide implementation. Today, about 4o% of countries worldwide use it to make better use of sunlight and to conserve energy, however, only a minority of the world’s population uses DST because it is not usually observed near the equator. This causes countries such as Brazil to use it in its southern regions but not its regions near the equator.

The idea of daylight saving time is controversial because many people like the clock shift because it increases the amount of daylight which has proven to have overall improvements to mental health, however many dislike it due to it complicating and disrupting sleep patterns, medical devices, billing and software that doesn’t automatically adjust the new time.

“I don’t like the daylight saving time because I was so accustomed to waking up and the sun being out.” said junior Lesly Hernandez.

“I enjoy daylight saving time because I like that we have more daylight now,” said senior Tony Sheerer. “I feel as though my days are longer.”

This year daylight saving time in Florida began on Sunday, March 10th at 2:00 AM and ends on Sunday, November 3rd at 2:00 AM.