This Sunday at approximately 2 a.m., you’ll wind your clock back an hour (or, since this is the 21st century, your phone will conveniently adjust). The good news is you’ll get an extra hour of sleep. But you’ll also be partaking in a tradition that’s become quite controversial. Here, we’ve compiled a list of the top five reasons why daylight saving time deserves to get the axe.
1. It doesn’t actually conserve energy.
DST was widely adopted in the 1970s as a means to decrease our energy consumption during an energy crisis. The logic behind the move is that if it stays lighter later in the evening, fewer people will use electricity to light their homes. What the plan didn’t account for was that during the summer, when there’s an extra hour of sweltering heat, people will continue to blast their air conditioners. In 2007, the California Energy Commission released a report showing that DST had little to no effect on energy consumption in the state that year.
2. It may cause increased heart attacks.
The American Journal of Cardiology released a study revealing that the transition to DST and back to standard time is associated with a short-term increased incidence of heart attacks. Yikes! The results were compiled from six years of data, so it’s probably pretty accurate.
3. It lowers productivity.
Till Roenneberg, a chronobiologist at Ludwig-Maximillians University in Munich, told National Geographic that the human body’s circadian clock struggles to adjust to the changing chronology of DST. The clock is regulated by light and darkness, which means that people become sluggish when their sleeping schedule is out of sync with their optimal circadian sleep periods.
4. It’s not federally mandated.
Though most states observe the tradition, DST isn’t required. Rebellious Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas Islands are the few that refuse to conform.
5. No one likes it anyhow.
A Rasmussen Report from March 2013 revealed that only 37 percent of Americans think DST is worth the hassle (down 8 percent from the year before), while 45 percent think the DST ritual is pointless.
