On Sunday, March 12th, 2023, daylight savings time took place all across the United States, besides Arizona. Daylight savings time (DST) was created to give humans a better use of daylight; however, losing an hour of sleep makes everyone feel tired, grumpy, and annoyed that they didn’t get all the sleep they could. 

Most of the world uses daylight savings time (including India, the US, Canada, and Europe), but certain areas that are typically warm all year round don’t use daylight savings time, which is something the United States should do. A few of the only reasons that we really use DST is because of farming. Most farmers around the world, including older farmers, don’t feel like waking up earlier or working in the dark to harvest their crops. When we apply daylight savings time, it allows farmers to be able to get up later and not farm in the pitch black. It was also used in 1918 after World War I. It was created so that people were able to conserve energy during the war.

The negative effect of daylight savings time does not impact just students and teachers, but everyone in the world has a negative opinion about it. It impacts people’s sleep schedule and how they react to things when they wake up, which can make or break someone’s day. Personally, since daylight savings time began, I’ve felt so tired even if I go to sleep early. Typically, I like to go to school but lately, I have no idea if it’s because of DST, I just feel so drained and tired that I cannot stand waking up and having to go to school again. According to Time and Date, “setting the clocks forward one hour in spring does not create more daylight, but it does change the time” which makes sense because when you wake up it’s brighter out but does that actually matter? I wouldn’t really mind if it was dark out when I woke up as long as I’m not tired or annoyed first thing in the morning. 

After daylight savings time, when students come back from the weekend, we really lose not only an hour of sleep but a week of school as well. Due to the fact that we lose an hour of sleep and sleep schedules get ruined, most of the time, students are so tired that they don’t have the energy to focus on school, and they also fall asleep in class as well. “It makes me feel dead,” says freshman Melody Manzella, who does not enjoy daylight savings time. Besides being used for farming and World War I, DST has such a negative effect on people all around the world, and we would all be just fine if it wasn’t a thing anymore.  A simple solution that is being used by Arizona, as well as Hawaii and Alaska, is permanent daylight savings time where we either spring forward or fall back and don’t change it. “In 2018, Proposition 7 passed, allowing the state legislature to pursue Permanent DST” (Wikipedia). All in all, proposition 7 allowed for states to decide whether or not they want to have daylight savings time or not change the clocks.