As a new chapter opens for American politics, it is natural to feel a certain uneasiness. What lies ahead? Will Americans continue to enjoy the peace and prosperity with which we have for so long been blessed, or will our way of life be torn asunder, as customs and conventions are reordered by an aggressive state?

　　Naturally, I am thinking here about Daylight Savings Time. The chattering classes have again suggested that we need to get rid of it. Do we? And is that really what Americans want?

　　Orange Juice in the Dark

　　Ever since 1966 (with a brief hiatus, described in a moment), most Americans have switched their clocks twice a year, falling back to Standard Time in November and flashing ahead to Daylight Savings Time in March. Many people find this inconvenient. Over 60 percent, in fact, tell pollsters they would prefer to stick to one time or the other. To the opponents of Daylight Savings, this looks dispositive. Americans are ready to throw in the towel.

　　Hold on, though! This picture is more complicated than it first appears. People do find clock-switching annoying, but they might not like the alternatives either. Without clock adjustments, we have to live with either darker mornings or darker evenings across the entire year. Are people really up for that? And do we agree on which one we should choose?

　　We do not. Asked whether they prefer Daylight Savings Time (“summer time”) or Standard Time (“winter time”), Americans are divided, though most surveys suggest that permanent Daylight Savings is the more popular option. It turns out, the question “Do you like switching your clock?” isn’t particularly helpful. Most people don’t, but they do still care about light. Some may not have reflected too deeply on how year-round Standard or Daylight Savings Time would alter their day. Others might opt for clock-switching over the unhappy situation of being permanently stuck in their non-preferred timeframe. 

　　The plot thickens further. Going by the numbers, it does look as though the most favored alternative among Americans would be a permanent change to Daylight Savings Time. Instead of “falling back” in the fall, we’d just continue on summer time across the whole calendar. Some Republicans, under the leadership of Marco Rubio, have recently made an effort to do exactly this, but the funny part is that this solution has already been tried, with unpromising results. In 1973, in response to the energy crisis, Richard Nixon signed legislation placing the nation on year-round DST in what was meant to be a 2-year experiment. At first, the measure enjoyed strong support (almost 80 percent), but those numbers plummeted to around 40 percent once Old Man Winter showed his face. It turns out people really don’t like dark mornings. They especially hate sending their kids off to school in the pitch black. Gerald Ford restored the old status quo after only one year, and we’ve been switching our clocks ever since.

　　Taking as premises that Americans 1) don’t love the status quo, and 2) didn’t like permanent DST when they tried it, one could conclude that it’s time to try the third option: permanent Standard Time. And indeed, a number of people have made exactly that argument, presenting Standard Time as the widely preferred choice.

　　Its not, though. The numbers strongly suggest that a switch to permanent Standard Time is in fact the least popular option. Presented with three alternatives (the status quo, permanent Daylight Savings Time, and permanent Standard Time), the most definitive poll I can find suggests that Americans prefer the status quo to permanent Standard Time by more than two-to-one margins. In Northern climes, where I live, it’s almost four to one.

　　Don’t let anyone tell you that year-round Standard Time is the people’s choice. It’s not. It’s the experts’ choice. They’re trying to sleep-train us.

　　Circadian Rhythms and Other Exotic Creatures

　　Sleep training, for those who don’t know, is the practice of trying to habituate a child to a regular sleep schedule. It’s normally intended for babies and toddlers, and like many parenting trends, it goes in and out of style. There are benefits, most obviously that it does sometimes succeed in getting babies to sleep regularly. For exhausted parents, that may be worth almost any sacrifice. But sleep training normally involves at least some use of the “cry it out” technique, wherein babies are left wailing alone in cribs until the Sandman finally comes for them. It can also leave families chained to a rigid schedule, rubbing outings and social engagements right off the schedule for a few years until the baby stops napping. Older siblings may find themselves sacrificing a lot of library trips and zoo days.

　　Parents do what they have to do. I never sleep-trained my kids, but I don’t judge other parents who did. Personally, I found that the super-strict schedule drained too much joy out of family life. I gave up a lot to be at home with my kids, and I wanted at least to have some freedom for sunset walks and summer afternoons by the river. But other families have different needs, and at the end of the day, everyone needs sleep. Its not wrong to sleep train a 6-month-old.

　　Permanent Standard Time would deprive the average American of 40 full minutes of waking daylight in the warmer months. Some of us really hate that idea.

　　Sleep training adults is another matter. Adults get to set their own priorities, which may or may not be built around hyper-regular sleep patterns. Sleep hygiene is a trendy health topic nowadays, and perhaps there are some good reasons for that; a civilization drenched in coffee and blue light tends to have a lot of insomniacs. Some redress may be in order, but when the sleep nazis start trying to rearrange everyone’s lives, I want to order them to their rooms for a nap.

　　Daylight Savings, we are told, is bad for our health. But why is it bad for our health? There are really two pieces to that argument. The first is built around the ostensible hazards of clock-switching. Supposedly, there are more heart attacks and car accidents at the onset of Daylight Savings in spring. This is nominally true, but the effect is quite small, such that even the Mayo Clinic suggests that it’s not worth factoring. Anyone who literally has a heart attack over a lost hour of sleep is likely in very poor shape already, but in any event we make up for it with fewer coronary events than average in the fall, when we get the extra hour of sleep. This doesn’t seem like a major concern.

　　The second argument claims that it is intrinsically good for us to align our daily rhythms with the earth’s tilt, looking straight up at the sun around noontime and sitting in darkness for a while before bed. Standard Time, by ensuring that it gets dark relatively early, would push us towards healthier sleep habits (assuming, of course, that we don’t do anything ridiculous, such as watching TV before bed, or turning on electric lights in our homes). Permanent Standard Time is recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, which insists that our “natural bio-rhythms” would be better served by an early-to-bed-and-rise schedule. “Issues other than patient health are driving this debate,” complains AMA Trustee Alexander Ding in his statement on the issue. And you know what? He is absolutely right. People do seem to feel remarkably free to care about things other than sleep hygiene. 

　　In a characteristically devastating post on this subject, Nate Silver points out that permanent Standard Time would deprive the average American of 40 full minutes of waking daylight in the warmer months. Some of us really hate that idea. I suspect, as in Nixon’s abortive experiment, that the experienced reality would be even more unpopular than the idea.

　　The People’s Choice

　　The really interesting question is not, “Do you like switching your clock?” but rather, “What is your highest priority with respect to daylight and time?” Juxtaposing survey data against many anecdotal conversations, I would suggest that people mostly fall into three broad categories.

　　The first category of people really hate adjusting schedules twice a year. They side with the sleep experts because they themselves do live by their circadian rhythms. They might be parents with rigorously sleep-trained babies, or adults prone to insomnia. I’ve argued with people who complain that they’re tired for weeks after the clock change. This is astonishing to me, but who can argue with subjective experience? For this group, the top priority is not switching.

　　The second category of people strongly prefers to have light in the morning when they’re waking up and getting started on their day. The parents have particularly strong feelings, but many adults also dislike walking across a pitch-black parking lot at 8 am. Psychologically, light tends to signal to us that a new day is underway. Dark mornings can exacerbate Seasonal Affective Disorder. 

　　The third category of people loves light, and especially afternoon and evening sunlight. Lovers of outdoor recreation tend to fall into this category. Some people want significant time after work for a hike or a game of outdoor tennis. They want to enjoy evening walks or a book in an outdoor hammock. They aren’t comforted by the promise that sundown in the shoulder seasons will still be after six. If you get off work at five, that leaves no time for anything. Those gorgeous spring picnics or September evening hikes will be lost to us.

　　These categories are not mutually exclusive. A person can value more than one. But if you value all three you’re out of luck, because this is a pick-two scenario. By switching our clocks, we can have both the evening sunlight and a reasonably-timed sunrise in winter. But if we aren’t willing to switch we must sacrifice one or the other. It’s either dark mornings, or dark evenings.

　　I have never seen a survey that asked people to rank-order these priorities, and it’s interesting how an issue like Daylight Savings (which is seemingly so straightforward) underscores the major challenge of figuring out what “the people” really want in a given situation. I myself place the highest value by far on evening light; the thought of losing the gorgeous September afternoons and late summer evenings is heartbreaking to me. But I also find dark mornings depressing. I dont mind early sundown quite as much in winter, when it at least feels cozy to be inside sipping hot tea. As a working mom of five, I’m indifferent to the clock-switching; I don’t think I’ve glimpsed the elusive “circadian rhythm” in over a decade. I remain, therefore, a proud and outspoken member of Team Status Quo. Go Daylight Savings! It gives us our light at the times when we can best use and enjoy it.

　　Everyone does not have to share my priorities. I can be sympathetic to other concerns. But I do encourage my compatriots at least to reflect on the benefits of the present arrangement, and the costs of alternatives. Historical precedent suggests that dark winter mornings bother people more than they initially anticipate. Meanwhile, Permanent Standard Time, for most of us, would literally mean darker lives. Is this truly what we want?

　　What we definitely should not do is shrug off the things that actually matter to people in deference to rarified “sleep experts.” Sleep matters, but it’s not the only thing that matters. Even if we take it as a premise that physical health should be the highest priority, it’s far from clear that permanent Standard Time would be the overall best option. Exercise, outdoor leisure, and the enjoyment of nature are all very good for physical and mental health. It’s only reasonable to suppose that less evening light will mean less of those things, likely replaced by more screen-based entertainment. Will that be beneficial to Americans’ health? Will it even improve their sleep in the end?

　　Living in Minnesota, I love the long summer evenings. Minnesota parks, beaches, and hiking trails are full of people at 8:30 pm in July. My evening sailing club simply could not meet on summer weekday evenings if dark descended an hour earlier. Who wants to give up on those good times? But the problem would be much worse in shoulder seasons, when this soccer-and-football mom would be picking kids up from their sports practices in the already-gathering gloom. My cross-country runner would regularly be finishing his meets in the dark. On every front, this just sounds to me like a really bad idea.

　　Take a hike, sleep experts. Then back off and let other people enjoy their evening hikes too.