Daylight Saving Time Is About Connection

I feel fatigued of late, how about you? I haven’t traveled anywhere. But my body feels as though it did. Summertime or Daylight Saving Time(DST) just occurred. Summertime started March 27 in Europe. Weeks earlier, March 13 at 2am, DST began in most of America. Still more countries will experience the change this month. Perhaps for the last time. As a human passionate about the study of jetlag, I find the conversation of both as very similar. A cure centered around light. But what if we all don’t need the same levels of light. Like jetlag, what DST teaches me is that it is a physical snapshot into societal equity.

As I set the clocks in my house forward one hour to gain sunlight in the evening, my circadian rhythms—the four biological clocks (physiological/behavioral, diurnal, ultradian and infradian) of my body --experienced disturbance. Everything about me needed to catch up with that seemingly nebulous hour taken from my day during sleep. Had my Apple phone not informed me, I could have missed it intellectually. Regardless of my mind, my body knows the hour is gone.

Like animals, we exist on a 24 hour cycle. The tangible strain most notable for me with DST, were changes in my cognition and my hunger. I forgot to start a load of laundry, misscheduled a meeting with an Australian and wanted to eat lunch an hour earlier than the clock stated. For my children I saw their emotions on the rise. Namely intense crying at night and the launching of breakable objects into the air (a fact they know all too well is not appropriate). I am okay with the change as I believe it allows us the ability to practice not being on a standardized schedule. An opportunity to be reminded of controls held by our temporal surroundings. It is my understanding that adaptation helps us grow. I would compare DST to a form of Darwinian Evolution.

But perhaps what we are evolving to is toward a world away from who we truly are.

What I realize from the natural world I garnered from a September, 2014 NIH study, “Biogeography of time partitioning in mammals.” Over the course of a year, across the globe, we all experience the same percentage of light and darkness. According to the study, artificial light is what is harming us. It also points out that 69% of animals are nocturnal, 20% diurnal, 8.5% cathemeral and 2.5%crepuscular. According to a 2014 Atlantic article, chronobiologist, Dr. Thomas Kanterman is finding in his sleep research that early risers are in the minority. And that not existing in the world of one’s personal circadian rhythm can lead to “poor memory, depression, obesity, even a greater risk for some kinds of cancer.”

Many have argued wanting to see an end to DST. Studies indicate rises in strokes and heart attacks during Spring forward time. There is even date that shows significant increases in car accidents as a result of the change. Depression from light depravation is a world-wide problem. And the Brookings Institute shows that increased daylight hours decrease crime. A 2018 survey by National Opinion Research and the Associated Press found that 71% of Americans want to do away with the time change. It is undecided as to which direction people would like to go—Daylight Saving or Standard Time.

DST or time in general is a subjective concept of connection. Time schedules allow for mass productivity. Wakeful hours are considered productive hours. But why do wakeful hours need to include sunlight? The hours people wake and sleep are enforced by society and then by social norms. The hours cafes are open, the hours transportation runs, the hours of television shows. If I send an email at 12midnight, because that is the only time I have to do things, people become concerned that something is wrong. My social behavior is unlike theirs. Similitude is not always a good thing.

According to timeanddate.com, 36% of the world’s countries, (most of whom are first world) participate in the activity of turning their clocks forward and back an hour twice each year to take advantage of daylight hours. DST specifically matters because it is to the benefit of one neighboring country to do what the other border sharing country is doing as far as time. Neighboring communities share goods and resources with one another. When timezones are inconsistent employees arrive to work late, productivity and morale can falter if some employees function on longer schedules of waking and sleeping, day-to-day tasks like shopping are not as easily completed if store hours do not coincide with work hours. Antarctica, a nation based purely on research and that experiences 24 hours of light in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter uses DST so that they can get goods and technology shipped to them.

But maybe, just maybe. The work that is happening from 9am to 5pm is busy work. People are reactive not proactive. Humans are working harder, not smarter. City planners, prove that connection is beneficial. It is neural synchrony of sorts, the physical proximity of thought and creativity. It was the comprehension of this concept that made Marconi famous for transmitting radio waves or communication.

What DST research found is that radio stations have issues managing all the shows during the day when DST occurs as there is too much data being transmitted. There is not enough space for more morning shows to be broadcast. If this comparison is made to neural synchrony, it could indicate that we are not thinking clearly because too many people are productive at once. Perhaps it would benefit all of society if there was less pressure on when commercial activity occurs. While I agree that density supports efficiency, I do not believe that people in dense environments all need to live the same way.

We know these issues have been realized for centuries. According to the Royal Museums of Greenwich, in the mid-1850’s, when Great Britain was politically dominant, 72% of commerce was dependent upon sea charts based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). GMT is time based on the average time the sun hit the meridian (the halfway point between the north and south poles) at Greenwich, London. By 1880 in Great Britain, GMT became standard. Soon there after, other countries followed suit. an international standard. Before DST was first introduced, we had standardized time. But prior to standardized time, every community existed on its own clock. Typically designated by a town clock which often was ten to fifteen minutes different from the town next store. In 1883 to respond to this inconsistency, America created standard time which it adopted from Britain. Standard time allowed trains to be dependable and prevented time based collisions. By 1884, the start and end to each day according to a clock, instead of the sun seemed to be a benefit for the entire world. And so, GMT was adopted as the basis of Global time.

DST was an idea that came about 100 years before standardized time. Benjamin Franklin recommended that people wake up earlier with the sun. Of his many arguments, he considered the change to be energy conserving. This is the US government’s rationale behind DST today. The first adoption of DST did occur because people wanted to experience more daylight hours. However, it was only two small villages in Hudson Bay, Ontario, Canada. Nonetheless the wellness argument cannot be discounted. In 1916, there was a greater wellness issue. WWI. The implementation of DST was founded on our need for coal conservation and so the first mass adoption of DST occurred.

Standardizing time for commerce is important. But forcing people to exist in a world that does not align with their physiological rhythm may be the culprit of the social, financial, physical and emotional costs we are trying to solve by abolishing Daylight Saving Time. The beauty of jetlag is that change occurs in a setting where we as humans can check ourselves. When groups of us are forced to experience change together, it does not encourage us to reflect and examine why. Instead, we commiserate and muddle through. We all keep moving ahead. We should take clues from jetlag. Jetlag is a response to getting somewhere we need to be. Physical discomfort is not bad. We should take clues from it. Ask ourselves to slow down. And take care of our health. Moving full steam ahead without allowing ourselves to regenerate is not a good idea. So as the time changes, make a point of scheduling your days, writing information down, taking time to be outside and use your time how you feel good in your body. Don’t get caught in the speed of moving ahead so quickly because you may loose sight of the journey. And as Summertime tells us, it is the relationships and the connections that matter.