Spring forward and fall back. These are the words that are heard in California, among other states that still enforce daylight savings, for turning our clocks ahead an hour or back an hour. This occurs every year on the 2nd Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November. All states, except for Hawaii and Arizona, observe daylight savings. 

In 2021, there was a bill that was passed by the Senate called the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021. This means that daylight savings will be permanent. In other words, in 2023 you won’t have to switch your clocks back an hour and they will stay the same once we go forward an hour. But once it was brought to the House of Representatives, it stalled, meaning the bill is being neglected by the voting committee and the bill can either die off or be brought up later down the road using a cloture. 

Daylight savings causes people’s day’s and routines to be thrown off. With either losing an hour of sleep or gaining an extra hour, that hour can make a huge difference in your day to day activities and take a toll on your health and your ability to do school work.

“I do not like daylight savings because it makes it feel like the days are longer,” senior Jazmin Ontonon said. “I lose sleep and I feel more tired. Like if I’m doing homework, I start to fall asleep because of the hour difference.”

On the contrary, some people actually find this daylight savings to have little to no effect on their schedule. People can take a couple of days to adjust and just think nothing of the hour difference. 

“I am still trying to get used to it,” senior Kylee Heather said. “For my rehearsals or practice, it’s going to get darker faster so it’s going to get cut short. I [also] just get up a little earlier because my body is used to that but other than that it takes me a few days to get used to.”

The discussion of why daylight savings is still occurring and talk about the bill going into effect still goes on today. Many students today only like when daylight savings is over to get the extra hour of sleep. 

“I only like daylight savings because of the extra hour of sleep I get,” senior Hannah Agustin said. “And [I like] when I wake up in the morning and the sun’s already there.” 

It was proven that people actually lose sleep which causes them to be less productive in their day. Daylight savings severely affects health as “workers who start before 7 a.m. typically lose even more sleep—as much as 36 minutes.” So when daylight savings was made to help, it actually harms more people.

“It affects your body because it is used to waking up at a certain time and performing at a certain time,” said Ontonon. “So when [the time] change’s after those 6 months, its hard to get back into that habit.”