March has arrived, marking the first month of spring. That might leave you wondering: is it time to change the clocks for daylight saving time yet?
The answer is: very nearly.
Daylight saving time begins on Sunday, March 10, at 2 a.m., when people will move their clocks an hour ahead, or “spring forward,” creating an extra hour of daylight in the evening and cutting morning light short by an hour.
It will last until Sunday, Nov. 3, at 2 a.m., when clocks “fall back,” reverting to standard time.
Daylight saving time begins the second Sunday in March and continues until the first Sunday in November.
The date the clocks move forward is actually on a historic date this year.
March 10, 2024, is the 55th anniversary of when James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tennessee, to assassinating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., though he later went back on that plea and maintained his innocence until his death. That took place on March 10, 1969.
Coincidentally, March 10 is also the 111th anniversary of the date that former slave, abolitionist and American hero Harriet Tubman died in 1913.
Do people actually like changing their clocks?
Most people would prefer to keep the clocks the same rather than changing them twice per year.
A CBS News poll of 1,612 adults indicated that most Americans don’t like changing the clocks. Of those sampled, 46% said they preferred daylight saving time all year round, 33% wanted standard time all year round and only 21% preferred the current system of switching back and forth.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act both in 2022 and 2023 to create permanent daylight saving time.
“This ritual of changing time twice a year is stupid,” Rubio said in a statement on his website. “Locking the clock has overwhelming bipartisan and popular support. This Congress, I hope that we can finally get this done.”
The Senate passed the bill in 2022, but it wasn’t passed in the U.S. House. There was no action taken last year.
What’s better, daylight saving or standard time?
At the state level, a Washington state Senate committee in January held a hearing on a law to stop the state from having to switch the clocks at all and maintain Pacific Standard Time throughout the year.
Doing so would fall in line with research by Baystate Medical Center sleep medicine doctor Karin Johnson. 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,” Dr. 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.
Daylight saving time lasts longer than standard. Why?
Standard time spans for just over four months of the year, with daylight saving time making up the remaining eight, but it used to be closer to a 50-50 split.
That changed with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. A provision in that law authored by U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., then a U.S. Representative, enacted the extension of daylight saving time.
Markey partnered with U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., to write the provision, which amended the Uniform Time Act of 1996 to increase daylight saving time and reduce standard time.
The new dates for clock changes first took place in 2007.
Markey later reported that the change in time led to about a half billion dollars in electricity savings and a reduction in 2.9 million barrels of oil as people shut the lights off earlier.
However, a U.S. Department of Energy report that came out in October of 2008 threw cold water on the notion of energy savings, stating that extended daylight saving time reduced electricity by only 0.03% over the course of the year.
Does everyone use daylight saving time?
Two states, Hawaii and Arizona, opted out of using daylight saving time — Hawaii in 1967 and Arizona in 1968. Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands also do not participate in daylight saving time.
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.
How did daylight saving time start?
Germany and Austria were the first countries to use daylight saving time in 1916 in order to conserve energy, according to National Geographic. But portions of Canada beat them to the punch by eight years, according to timeanddate.com, which said that residents of Port Arthur, Ontario, made the first daylight saving time zone by turning their clocks forward an hour from July 1 to Sept. 1, 1908.
In the United States, a clock change called “Fast Time” was introduced in 1918, but it was repealed less than a year later. Some cities, including Boston, New York and Pittsburgh, continued to use it, however.
The concept was reintroduced in 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and daylight saving time, then called “War Time,” was established through 1945.
Between 1945 and 1966, no uniform rules for changing clocks existed. In 1966, the United States passed the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which provided a framework for a nationwide daylight saving time schedule.
