The US officially started moving their clocks ahead by one hour
This takes ‘time is a social construct’ on a different level.
Daylight saving time is the yearly change in American time to an hour early every second Sunday of March. This year, the change happened on March 12, 2023, at 2:00 AM. This time change will go on until the first Sunday in November, before the clocks go back to standard time on November 5.
Devices automatically change the time, so individuals may not even notice the change that much, says reports.
This change in time happens because, with the different seasons, we also get shorter hours of daylight and this update in time is to make the most of the sunlight received when awake.
What are its effects?
In this day and age where we do a lot of things virtually, these include home-based job opportunities for foreign firms, including American-based companies. An obvious effect of this is another adjustment for a time change for Filipinos in that work set-up. Since daylight saving time doesn’t really happen in the Philippines, Filipinos working for American-based companies would have to adjust to that time again hitting their sleep schedules the most, which is one of the impacts seen by medical residents with daylight saving time to those affected by it and sleep deprivation has been associated to multiple cases of car accidents and heart attacks.
Apart from this, medical residents also associate sleep loss as a factor that adds to the increased number of depressive symptoms shown, in a study that was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health.
With the Sunshine Protection Act, daylight saving time could be made permanent. In March 2022, the US Senate, following years of debates, finally voted to end the changing of clocks and make daylight saving time permanent.
The clock is ticking, and the bill since then has been stalled reports NBC News. However, in March 2023, the bill has been reintroduced to the 118th congress by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. Although, sleep experts still prefer making standard time permanent due to the effects brought by daylight saving time.
