On daylight savings last year, my family had to wake up at 3 a.m. for our flight to our spring break destination — the lost hour of sleep made my family very irritable and the confusion added an ounce of stress to my family’s preparations. But I was in a giddy mood, knowing spring had arrived, and summer wasn’t far.
Losing 60 minutes of sleep doesn’t affect me, because next week, I know I can look out my bedroom window at 6:45 a.m. to a dark sky and enjoy knowing that this is the first step to regaining those late summer sunsets.
To those not caring to look past any appearing inconvenience, daylight savings could be considered meaningless and disruptive.
And yes, for two days of the year, there is some confusion while having to reset clocks and some frustration when losing one hour of sleep on the day — March 8.
The 60 minutes we lose due to Spring daylight savings receives too much criticism. People seem to forget that we’re prepping for longer days, more sunshine and summer.
It’s a reminder that summer (and no school) will soon be upon us — which means pool days taking in the high UV rays and roasting marshmallows at bonfires.
The later sunsets make drive-in movies and dinner picnics in the park possible, and you don’t have to worry about if your phone flashlight will be able to navigate you through the dark.
Daylight savings haters like to bring up the fact that it’s too dark in the morning after the time change. I understand, it’s easier to get out of bed when the sun is shining — but realistically, people are awake and active later in the day, so it makes sense to have more sunlight in the evening when people can enjoy it.
I can see myself next week, peeling my eyes open at 6:45 a.m. to see the darkness, making it ten times harder to wake up. But the sunlight and warm temperatures that await me later in the day are motivation enough. My summer bucket list is already being written up with outdoor activities at Loose Park and the pool.
Another plus side to daylight savings is the use of energy went down by .03%, according to Journalist’s Resource in 2017, due to the light the sun provides for solar power energy. And any energy saved only helps the environment and again shows the benefits of daylight savings.
Crime rates during this time also dropped 7%. This could be a coincidence or maybe those sunlit summer nights have a positive effect on people.
The bottom line is the sunlight, in a quite literal sense, outshines and outweighs the darkness in the morning and its importance is not lessened by the small amount of time it takes to reset the clocks.
On March 8, spring forward and make sure to set your clocks one hour forward. I encourage everyone to look on the bright side and keep in mind the perfect, unconventional nature of daylight savings.
The matter of the fact is daylight savings does a lot more good than harm — so before you complain about losing sleep, instead reminisce about those summer nights.