Spring forward is here!
Some people have adjusted to daylight savings, and others suffer due to the time change.
In the 2021-22 Congress, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) presented a bill that would end “fall back” and keep “spring forward. The bill passed the Senate, but did not move to the House of Representatives.
In 2018, California voters approved Proposition 7, which allowed lawmakers to make daylight savings permanent. So far, that hasn’t happened.
“Senator Rubio’s Sunshine Protection Act would eliminate the changing of clocks to standard time for those four months. The sum, if enacted, we would not ‘fall back’ in November and would enjoy a full year of DST, instead of only eight months,” reads a summary of the Sunshine Protection Act released by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) from the first launch of the bill.
“This ritual of changing time twice a year is stupid. Locking the clock has overwhelming bipartisan and popular support. This Congress, I hope that we can finally get this done,” said Rubio in the news release.
The Sunshine Protection Act was reintroduced recently in March 2023.
Students note the chaos to their sleep schedules during this time of year.
“Daylight savings time is kicking my a*s! I do appreciate the sun being out longer but my sleep schedule is screwed up,” said by Delta student, Sheryl Munoz.
Is anyone else’s sleep schedule screwed up?
Sleep specialists and doctors identified a pattern every spring forward. The major pattern is car accidents and physical health.
Rubio’s bill gives more detail about the negative effects of Daylight Savings Time. The goals of making Daylight Savings time permanent is to help reduce car accidents involving pedestrians, reduce risks for cardiac/stroke issues, reduce the number of robberies by 27 percent, benefit the economy, reduce childhood obesity, benefit the agricultural economy, and reduce energy usage, according to the summary of the bill from Rubio’s office.
How can people adjust their sleep schedules?
Not much is said when advising for Daylight Savings time. Sleep specialists suggest people should get seven to nine hours, and eventually your body will adjust to the time change.
Daylight savings time was introduced in 1918, during World War I, according to a story published in the Washington Herald, a now out-of-publication newspaper that has an archive within the Library of Congress. The article summarized why different time frames of spring forward and fall back. The idea of daylight savings was to help conserve energy during the four-year war. Therefore, the scheduled time changes became a routine in American society.
