Photo by SaMaria Boyd for Her Campus at SFA
In order to answer that question, we need to dive into the back history of daylight savings. The idea of daylight savings was first theorized by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 in his essay “An Economical Project.” To put it Frankly, the main purpose is to make better use of day light. In doing so, we would essentially have more time in the day to complete necessary tasks.
When winter hits, the nights seem to come faster than they do during the summer season. However, back when the idea of saving daylight was in its infant stages, people of that time were laborers in ways that we are not as likely to be today. For example, people who worked in the fields had to get up at the crack of dawn to tend to crops and farm animals, but those same people stopped working the minute the sun stopped shining. Their life’s work circled around the sun, and when the winter seasons came, night came much faster. Therefore, it was necessary for them to turn back the clocks in their homes in order to better make use of their days and their sunshine.
In today’s world, we associate daylight savings with “Do I lose sleep or do I gain it?” Time is still money in our contemporary world, but our use of sunlight isn’t measured so heavily by the jobs we hold now. We still carry out our daily chores, schooling, and occupations regardless of the forever looming seasonal change. Ultimately, in today’s age, do we need daylight savings the same way people did back in the day? Not necessarily. But keeping the tradition of either losing an hour of sleep or staying out longer during the evenings can be quarrelsome for some individuals.
There are people who enjoyed the hour push back even though it meant losing an hour of sleep when it happened. People like this can easily associate loss of light with gained opportunity during the night. These are usually the people who enjoy spending the night out with friends, or spending it indoors cuddled up with their lovers or a good book. This is also seen as a plus for early birds who enjoy getting up early. However, the same cannot be said for all.
There are bountiful groups of people who hate the implication of daylight savings all together. To them, there’s nothing mentally appealing about losing an hour of sleep, even if it means being able to stay out longer simply because the idea of waking up an hour earlier sounds absolutely terrible. To them, waking up during an hour that they should’ve had to stay asleep is pointless and can cause agitation to those who don’t stand by the idea of daylight savings.
Everyone has their own particular thoughts and opinions when it comes to daylight savings, but is it totally needed in today’s age? No. As a society we hold on to old notions the way a hoarder holds on to dust covered relics. If we were to lose daylight savings and stopped turning back our clocks, the issue we’d face at most is seeing sunlight creep through our blinds an hour early. That’s it. Daylight savings, in totality, isn’t considered a necessity simply because, if we lost that tradition, a year from now, it wouldn’t be missed.