The ritual of ‘Springing forward’ and ‘Falling back’ may become a thing of the past.
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A bill, called the Sunshine Protection Act, would make daylight saving time permanent in the U.S. and end the twice-yearly practice of adjusting clocks each spring and fall. The act was approved overwhelmingly by the U.S. House of Representatives 308-117 this week, is backed by the White House, and still needs Senate approval before it can become law.
The change would bring darker mornings and brighter evenings — along with a raft of support as well as experts who warn it could disrupt sleep patterns and contribute to mental health issues like fatigue, anxiety and depression.
On one side are people who argue permanent daylight saving time would mean more evening daylight for families and businesses.
One Facebook user said “BRING IT ON!” under a South Florida Sun Sentinel post.
But critics counter it would leave children heading to school in the dark during winter, particularly in Florida.
“Naturally, we are supposed to be aligned with our sun, but if all of a sudden you throw that off, there’s all sorts of consequences,” said James McKenna, associate professor of psychology and sleep researcher at Nova Southeastern University.
Darker mornings mean losing what he called the “rousing aspect of the sun,” which is the natural light exposure that helps people stay alert.
“If you don’t have the rousing aspect of the sun, you’re groggy, you’re fatigued, your vigilance is impaired,” he said, adding that under a permanent daylight saving system, this would become a year-round issue rather than a temporary one.
Eight of the 12 months currently fall under daylight saving time.
But McKenna also recognizes the bill’s potential benefits — later sunsets encourage more activity and give businesses a boost.
Ashtaad Dalal, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, argues that permanent standard time is the better option for public health.
“In general, brighter mornings will help people wake up more easily, improve alertness, and kind of support people getting better sleep at night,” said Dalal.
If the law passes, he recommended that people keep a consistent sleep and wake-up schedule and suggested tools like blackout blinds, sunglasses for evening driving and blue-light blockers to adjust to brighter evenings.
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He also connected sleep quality to broader health outcomes.
“Poor sleep contributes to several of today’s public health crises, including increased risk of heart disease, hypertension, obesity [and] excessive daytime sleepiness,” Dalal said.
In a , 54% of U.S. adults said the clock change disrupted their sleep more than anything else, ranking above mental health, alertness, eating, exercise and social life.
Permanent daylight saving time isn’t a new idea. The U.S. first adopted daylight saving nationwide during World War I, when Congress passed the Standard Time Act of 1918 to save energy — a change that lasted less than a year due to concerns over children going to school before sunrise.
For some South Florida parents like Tyler Wright, this is still a concern.
“How are the kids going to be safe?” said Wright, a Miami Gardens parent.
Wright’s own 13-year-old daughter is homeschooled, but she said she is thinking of nieces and nephews who attend traditional schools.
“What are the safety measures that are going to be put in place?” she said, noting that the risk could be more pronounced in neighborhoods with higher crime rates.
Florida is among the states with laws setting later school start times for older students, with middle schools starting no earlier than 8 a.m. and high schools no earlier than 8:30 a.m., but Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a measure giving districts the option to opt out.
“Kids need more sleep than adults … So they do better at school when they are there during the daylight hours,” said Jennifer Martin, a geriatrics professor at Florida International University who also studies sleep disorders.
She warned that darker mornings under permanent daylight saving time could work against those efforts. “That impacts learning, it impacts mental health, it definitely impacts student driving safety in addition to kids again standing outside waiting for the bus in the dark,” she said.
Martin pointed to her own two children as an example, one who attended high school before California’s later school start times took effect and one after.
“The one who went to school later woke up every day for school without an alarm and did not drink caffeine in high school, which was very different from my older one who had to get up much earlier and was chronically sleep-deprived through high school,” she said. “Changing the clock on the wall does absolutely nothing to change our biology.”
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