The point of having Daylight Saving Time (DST) is to conserve energy, encourage more people to spend time outside, and allow us to use natural daylight better. Now, this might have worked 20 years ago, but with the growth of technology and the increase in the use of energy, Daylight Saving Time has no effect on saving energy. Also, it has a negative impact on people’s body clocks which can affect people’s health. Despite this, the U.S still spends hundreds of millions on DST.
In Florida, there have been multiple efforts to try and eliminate the clock change practice, known as the “Sunshine Protection Act.” Many other states have tried to enact laws as well. Only 19 of the 50 states want this practice to be year-round.
Every state is different and that is why having DST may help them. However, if we talk about the future and how the country will evolve, DST won’t have an effect soon.
DST is a practice that was good for its time and maybe effective for some states now, but it’s time to stop hanging on to what helped in the past and figure out what can help for the future to help conserve energy. For example, lowering the costs of things that can conserve energy might be a good step to go.
Energy is a very important problem that comes with daylight saving time, but this also has some additional conflicts as well. For instance, DST changes our body clocks which can compromise your health. Feeling tired can trigger depression, and increase the rate of heart attacks. DST has only been horrible for our country. It’s one of the reasons why there is an increase in mental health problems, car accidents, and more.
Most people who want to solve these issues also want to keep DST. It is a much deeper problem than what it has been portrayed as. There must be some sort of realization on how this issue is slowly hurting the U.S.
Another way it is hurting Americans is financially with billions of dollars fading away annually. It’s quite crazy to know that this much money can go to just changing the clock back and forth. Between 4 to 10 billion is being spent on health costs caused from heart attacks, increase in strokes, car accidents, and lost workplace productivity, which all drastically injure the U.S. economy.
Daylight Saving Time does not bring anything useful to the U.S. It is an old practice that doesn’t conserve energy, compromises people’s health, and hurts Americans financially. When DST is gone, it will only bring positives.
