There is always a lot of talk about Daylight Saving Time at this time of the year. This week, I have spent a lot of time thinking about it.

I thought Ben Franklin invented it. Turns out he did not! But how and why did our society decide to adopt this practice? Germany was the first to adopt it in 1916 during World War I to conserve energy during the war. The British soon followed and named it “summer time.” The United States followed in 1918, but it was not widely accepted here. In fact, it was so unpopular to farmers that it was repealed in 1919 and did not become standard practice in the U.S. until 1966 when the Uniform Time Act was passed, which standardized daylight saving time from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October. But even today, not all states follow daylight saving time. Alaska and Hawaii as well as our U.S. territories do not. And worldwide, only about 70 countries (one quarter of the world’s population) follow it.

We use Daylight Saving time to shift the time we wake up, go to work (and school), come home, and go to bed so that we have more daylight hours at the end of the day. But permanent standard time is more natural and is the best correlation between the sun's cycle and your body clock. It makes sense that sunrise wakes you up and sunset makes you sleepy. Studies done over many years have shown that shifting our schedules leads to increases in heart attacks, strokes, car crashes, workplace injuries and more deer strikes. It is also linked to increases in headaches, depressive episodes and lower SAT scores.

The impact on kids remains uncertain as there are benefits to both. On the one hand, walking to school in the pitch dark during Daylight Saving is not fun, but waking up to sunlight during standard time is. Gaining an hour of sleep in October is great, but losing that hour again in April is not. And darkness at 5pm is never welcome. Kids need time to play outside, to hold practices and games during daylight hours, and teens need the sunlight to stay charged to tackle homework and studying at night. When the sun goes down, we get sleepy.

The Sunshine Protection Act recently passed by the U.S. Senate would make Daylight Saving Time permanent. If passed in the House of Representatives, the law will go into effect in November of 2023, making this our last standard time. So enjoy the sunshine as you wait for the bus these next few months, because next year at this time you’ll need a good flashlight.