Argumentative Essay On Daylight Savings Time

According to Nick Visser of the Huffington Post, daylight savings time has been used as early as 1897, countries around the world began implementing and using daylight savings time to increase the productivity and ability to get work done. People were able to and overall more likely to do work or activities that would benefit themselves and others (Visser). In the early 1900s, during World War One, the United States and European countries decided that implementing this policy would help conserve energy and contribute to the war effort. The concept of daylight savings time is to reduce the use of residential energy, which tend to be heaviest by night. People have to start and end their work earlier so they do not have to turn on the lights at

least for an hour when they reach their still sunny home from work (Lee). The energy that was saved with daylight savings time in the 1900s was definitely beneficial during that day and age but in today’s modern, technological world with abundant energy, it has become an outdated practice. In an article to the NatGeo News, author Brian Handwerk quoted Hendrick Wolff saying that the money we saved on light reduction wasn’t enough to justify the change. Some people also believe that daylight savings time has a negative effect on our health. Sheila Eldred of DNews wrote an article that shows a direct correlation to heart attacks.
The whole point of daylight savings time is to reduce energy usage and save money, but does it really conserve energy?

According to Benjamin Franklin, who originally came up with the idea to save candles during the warm parts of the year, adjusting our clocks should benefit our social lives and economy in a positive way. In 2006, the state of Indiana implemented daylight savings as a statewide initiative. Studies were done and unpredictably, statewide, residential energy use went up a whole one percent across the board. This costed the state 9 million dollars because of the increased demand for air conditioning and cooling during the summer months and heating in the early spring months. This further proves that daylight savings time was a very beneficial policy in the past because of reduced energy storage. Because of today’s modern advances in energy use and streamlining the whole energy storage process, it really makes daylight savings time not only obsolete but harmful in some ways to our

economy.
Many people believe that daylight savings time has a negative effect on our bodies and how we function in everyday life.

Martin Young, the associate professor of medicine at UAB, believes and can prove that the shift in time that daylight savings causes can throw our “molecular clock” off and lead to sleep deprivation. Obviously sleep deprivation can cause many health related issues but the biggest is the increased risk of heart attacks. Researchers found a slight increase in heart attacks in the week after setting clocks forward for spring. Among those taking cardiac medication ands and having low cholesterol and triglycerides, the risk was more pronounced (Eldered). A good way to describe what time change does to our bodies is to think of the last time you went on a long flight. When you got off you probably felt like you had just ran a marathon and are mentally and physical drained. The same kind of thing happens to our bodies within the first few weeks of setting the clocks back. Aside from these health risks, feeling plain tired is one of the side effects of losing the hour of sleep that comes with daylight savings time. When our bodies adjust to a certain schedule and become dependent on getting sleep at those hours, abruptly taking it and moving it one hour back can throw of the whole body’s

“mojo”.
A lot people in today’s society believe that we would be better off without daylight savings time. With the advances in energy saving technology and the large lifestyle change our society has undergone since daylight savings time was first introduced, it almost feels like an inconvenience when that time of the year rolls around. Hendrick Wolff, of the University of Washington suggests that air conditioning is the big thing holding back daylight savings time from being effective. We do save money on the slight cut down of light usage but since people are inside more, air conditioning usage goes up and cancels out any energy savings.
In the early to mid-1900s daylight savings time was a game changer when it came to nationwide and even global energy consumption. Without it who knows what would’ve happened to our country and so many others. The policy was one that probably saved our country millions of dollars due to the lack of advanced energy saving solutions. That was the past and this is now though. In today’s modern society, daylight savings time is almost obsolete because of how advanced us as a society have become. It is no longer a time where we see huge sums of money saved because we’re using less electricity. Instead we are seeing quite the opposite, in some cases we are losing money because of the time change.