How Daylight Savings Time is Affecting Us Negatively

Steven Petrov

The Paw Print

The daylight saving time practice has been adopted by many of the developed nations around the world and aims to increase the usage of the illuminated part of the day. This practice has been used and applied in the US since 1979.

A recent study has shown that this commonly used and well-established method of saving daylight time actually has some negative effects over people. Even though the longer part of the day is light (which supposedly should be a benefit from the time change), daylight saving time actually has been related to some really negative statistics.

The worldwide statistics show that car accidents significantly increase in number when the change to daylight savings time is made. Researchers believe that the 1 hour change in peoples’ sleeping cycles could lead to serious alternation and weakening of the human alertness and awareness, which on the road are sometimes crucial in predicting and avoiding any potential accidents.

Another statistic shows a correlation between the daylight saving time and the increased number of workplace related injuries. This statistic relates to the jobs that involve higher risk of physical injury like miners, drivers, construction or any other jobs dealing with heavy machinery. Numerous scientific researches have focused on the topic over the last 5-6 years, concluding that mine workers who come to work with 1 hour less sleep have a much higher probability of getting injured while performing their job related activities.

One of the most interesting studies done on the topic was concluded by a team of Swedish scientists in 2008 that concluded that in the 3 days following the time change the number of people who experience a hear attack on a worldwide basis increases on average by 5%. The Swedish team appointed this negative statistic to the fact that with a distortion in the normal sleeping pattern of an individual, higher levels of the stress hormones are usually released.  This causes series of deep tissue inflammatory processes to have a higher chance of occurring.

Even though the pointless surfing online doesn’t necessarily represent any type of “physical” hurting, it has been closely related to a significant increase in the corporate and individual losses that people and companies acquire immediately after the time change. In 2012 the Journal of Applied Psychology published a study pointing out the significantly increased levels of online surfing immediately after the switch to daylight saving time. This causes more employees to not be fully concentrated on their work and make mistakes, which lead to individual as well as corporate losses.

This article is meant to point out how a seemingly unimportant activity that we have all adopted can have effects on much more things, activities, and performances than we anticipate. One would never assume that any of the above-mentioned correlations could actually exist, but this is why the scientist are there to research and test even the seemingly most “harmless” thing we are so used to as a society.