Maybe stopping biannual time changes is more important than which time is chosen

Maybe the key is to pick one time and stick to it. If daylight savings time is bad for teenagers and small children crossing the street can’t we split the difference on the time and keep it the same all year round? See this lengthier article which ends with the same proposed solution: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/03/19/permanent-daylight-saving-time-house/

This daily email from The Atlantic has three clickable links.

FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2022

This week, the United States Senate did something surprising: It unanimously passed a bill to end the traditional changing of the clocks—one that would suspend Americans in a permanent state of daylight saving. Even some senators were surprised, BuzzFeed News reports. The legislation passed under a process called unanimous consent, wherein the body can skip the rigamarole and jump to a simple yay, as long as there are no objections. (None were raised.) The act still needs the approval of the House and the signature of President Joe Biden to become law. But online and off, Americans are already grappling with the potential ramifications: What would a world without changing our clocks look like? And would that be a good thing? “There’s no good biological reason to change the time twice a year, but most health experts support ending daylight saving time, not making it permanent,” Olga Khazan reported last year. “Still, experts say the bigger problem for health is the changing of the clock, not the precise hour America ends up on.” Daylight saving time is bad for teenagers. “If the House passes this bill and it becomes law, we’ll face very long, very dark mornings every winter,” the family therapists Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright write, noting that teenagers have a natural delay in their biological clock. Teens waking up for school will “miss most of their REM sleep, or dream sleep, which happens in the early-morning hours and is essential to mental health.” One family already took the plunge. Tali and Scott Richards in Connecticut decided not to change their clocks in the fall of 2020. They considered their experiment a success, Olga wrote in 2021.