With August nearing its end and September just around the corner, many people may find themselves wondering “when is it time to turn the clocks back and ‘fall back’?”
Twice a year, people throughout the country adjust their clocks, first “springing forward” to cherish an extra hour of daylight during the summer months before “falling back” to standard time for winter.
Daylight saving lasts for 238 days — about 65% of the year, according to National Institute of Standards and Technology.
This year, daylight saving time kicked off March 10 and will end Sunday, Nov. 3. It will start up again on Sunday, March 9, 2025.
Every year on the second Sunday of March, clocks are set ahead one hour at 2 a.m. — becoming 3 a.m. — marking the start of daylight saving.
“In the United States, this has the effect of creating more sunlit hours in the evening during months when the weather is the warmest,” NIST reported.
How popular is changing the clocks twice a year?
Changing the clocks is fairly unpopular.
In a 2023 YouGov poll of 1,000 Americans, 62% of participants said they no longer want to change their clocks twice a year.
Of those sampled, 50% said they preferred daylight saving time all year round while 31% wanted standard time all year. Only 12% voted they did not have a preference while 7% said they were not sure where they stood on the matter.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, there are many states that are trying to stop from having the clocks switch.
In 2023, there were three bills to establish permanent standard time in Massachusetts, but none was enacted.
All told last year, there were 75 pieces of legislation filed in 29 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. None of those bills became law that year, however.
There are 19 states that are ready to switch to permanent daylight saving time — Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wyoming — but congressional approval is required first.
As of 2024, at least 30 states have considered or are considering legislation related to daylight saving. This year alone, 28 bills have been introduced and 36 have been carried over from the last session, NCSL reports.
Bills to transition to standard time failed in Maine and Virginia earlier this year.
Indiana is currently considering a resolution petitioning the entire state move to share a universal time zone as the northwest and southwest corners are in the central time zone while the rest of the state is in the eastern time zone.
How did daylight saving time start?
Germany and Austria were the first countries to use daylight saving time in 1916 in an effort to conserve energy, according to National Geographic.
However, portions of regions of Canada have been credited for starting the tradition even earlier.
Some reports say residents of Ontario created the first daylight saving time zone by turning their clocks an hour forward between July and September in 1908, according to timeanddate.com.
A clock change called “Fast Time” was introduced in 1918 but was ended less than a year later, though cities such as Boston, New York and Pittsburgh continued to use it.
Daylight saving time was reintroduced by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942, under the term “War Time,” which held through 1945.
Between 1945 and 1966, no uniform rules for changing clocks existed until the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was passed, which provided a framework for a nationwide daylight saving time schedule.
Is standard time better than daylight saving?
There is some disagreement about which is better — standard time or daylight saving time.
For sleep medicine doctor Karin Johnson at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, the research points to standard time.
She said her research completed with colleagues on sleep cycles shows that permanent standard time can improve brain functionality, mood, focus, and help reduce car crashes and the risk of developing long-term health conditions.
“Timezones were designed to have the sun as close to being overhead at noon as possible,” Johnson said in 2022. “Daylight savings time shifts the clock an hour so we get later sunrises and sunsets. But unfortunately, our bodies don’t go by the clock time, they go by the sun time.”
A Baystate Medical Center spokesperson at the time clarified in a statement that the medical center does not promote Johnson’s views.
“Dr. Johnson’s comments were not a reflection of Baystate Health but her own personal position on the subject as a physician and involvement with the organization promoting it,” the statement read.
