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I'm surprised at the number of commenters who think permanent DST is favourable to night owls and bad for morning people. I think it's night owls and delayed-c
by jlokier 5y ago
I'm surprised at the number of commenters who think permanent DST is favourable to night owls and bad for morning people.
I think it's night owls and delayed-cycle teenagers attending school who will suffer most under permanent DST.
In the Winter, permanent DST means everyone has to get up an hour earlier for work or school's clock time, relative to the sun which regulates their body rhythm.
Someone pointed out virtually nobody sets when they wake by the sun. Fair enough. But the sun does affect how well and how long they sleep, how restored they are, how they feel when they wake, and energy and concentration through the rest of the day.
Night people already struggle with getting up early enough for clock-time social expectations. As it's a struggle already, getting up an hour earlier is going to be harder for them. (If the sun makes no difference, why is it already hard?)
Research (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691158) suggests that overall, health will suffer, sleep will be shorter, and educational attainment in teenage years will reduce. Even brain development may be adversely affected.
But there will be more shopping (economic activity), so that's ok.
- saurik 5y agoI mean, as a true night owl, my real problem isn't happening when I wake up: it is that when I go to bed in the morning it is extremely bad for me if dawn has already happened, so I would prefer the sun stay down for as long as possible to give me more leeway.
- balfirevic 5y agoDon't you have shades/curtains to make your room dark even when the sun is out?
- ilovesunlight 5y agoFinally, someone that gets it.
- svnpenn 5y agoI don't like it when the sun comes up early. Unless you have really dark curtains, then you don't get to choose when to wake up. You wake up when the sun comes up. So if you stayed up late, fuck you, here's some bright sun at 6am. Oh, and you're coming home for the day at 5 or 6p? Fuck you, here's some darkness. I can't understand how anyone would be against DST.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- raspberry1337 5y agoYou can also buy a nice eyecover for 2 dollars.
- nrdvana 5y agoI'm against DST because I think if people are going to wake up at solar 6am and go to work at solar 7am they ought to call it 6am and 7am instead of calling it 7am and 8am. "Work is defined to start at 8am so lets have everyone call solar 7am '8am' so we can get everyone to go to work an hour earlier." Now "high noon" will occur at 1pm and the middle of the night will be 1am. In Ohio (or west edge of any time zone) the middle of the day will be 2pm and middle of the night 2am. Sunburn zone in ohio? 12pm-4pm.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoWhen it is dark at 5pm is utterly depressing in the winter. This change is huge and I really never thought I would see it in my lifetime and am overjoyed.
- wes-k 5y agoThis isn’t a DST issue. Start school later.
- mchusma 5y agoI agree. Changing times on everyone was always silly. If a group of people want to change the time they go to school or work, they should just do that.
- mushyhammer 5y agoI really don't get what you're saying. Move the clock 4 hours forward and you favor some people; Move it backwards and you favor others. You literally cannot make everyone live in their "perfect sleep cycle." If you feel sleepy "at 2am" this changes nothing for you. In Norway in December people wake up "in the middle of the night" because sunrise is at 10am: Humans can adjust easily to this stuff, it's just that we like to sleep "late" (as defined by the clock)
- jlokier 5y agoI didn't argue for any particular movement or direction, and I agree that any change favours some and is worse for others. I argued that commenters who say permanent DST specifically favours night owls are incorrect about who it favours, because they (most of them) haven't considered the effect of the sun on sleep quality and daytime cycles. My view is that most solar-affected night owls will have slightly worse sleep and daytime energy and metabolism, because clock-time social requirements will not change (that's the point of changing the clocks after all). Sunshine after will work will make people happier after work, which is reflected in economic activity, but I think the insiduous effects on health are being ignored. There is some scientific research to back up this point of view. There are early risers here who don't like permanent DST saying "we're not all night owls like you", believing the change is designed to favour night owls. There are night owls here who say permanent DST will be great for them because there will be less sun in the mornings to ruin their sleep. That implies they have a choice about when to wake, or they are thinking of Summer. They are in the minority even for night owls, because the change applies only to Winter, when most people are already forced by social requirements to get up when it's dark. There is no light streaming in that early in Winter. Permanent DST will only mean that it's dark for longer after they get up.
- bruce511 5y agoNot to go off topic, but everyone seems to just ignore everyone not working 9-5. I mean if you work night-shift, morning shift, evening shift, you already have weird circadian rhythms, and out-of-sync school schedules. And yet, somehow, they seem to function as humans. So maybe that 1 hour difference for 4 months a year won't actually result in the zombie apocalypse. People will adapt just fine.
- bkor 5y ago> And yet, somehow, they seem to function as humans I know various people who work in shifts. It's really bad for your rhythm. It takes months before people find a way to deal with the effects. It's worth it due to the additional money they earn, that's it.
- numeri 5y agoThere is so, so much research showing that night-shift and living out of sync with one's circadian rhythm literally shortens your life. It weakens your immune system, increases your chance of cardiovascular issues, gives you gastrointestinal issues, etc.
- 8ytecoder 5y agoOh jeez! Have you ever spoken to anyone whose shifts change every week?
- greyhair 5y agoClearly not. I shared a house with a guy that worked rotating shifts. It was hell, and made me really glad I did not do that. But I worked blue collar job the first ten years of working, so 7 to 5, and for a while 5AM to 6PM (six days a week). I don't think many people on this thread understand what it means to wake up between 5:30 and 6:00 AM every day (depending on your commute) to get to work.
- bmitc 5y agoIt is kind of weird to me that people are coming out of the woodwork arguing about stability and all sorts of stuff as if a single time setting is somehow worse than changing it twice a year. Winter in the northeastern U.S. is damn depressing because the sun sets at basically 3:30-4:30pm. If you sleep in on a weekend, you get max 4-5 hours of sunlight (feels like less because the sun is so low and thus long twilights). Kids coming home from school have zero after school time with sunlight.
- mvkel 5y agoNorway would be the counter argument to everything you've said. Highly educated, longest living, least depressed. And the sun is out at midnight 76 days per year there. Humans are adaptable. A -permanent- hour change would surely be less harmful than changing said hours twice a year.
- inciampati 5y agoYes and the sun never rises completely for a similar length of time. Perhaps it's the darkness that's the key to utopia?
- jjallen 5y agoI strongly doubt this. If this was true, seasonal affective disorder would occur in the summer and not the winter, don't you think? And our ancient ancestors didn't evolve where it is dark. Nor did we evolve where the length of day changes much at all. The fact that short days and darkness cause so many people problems in the winter tells me that amount of sunlight really matters to us. And generally speaking, more is better, to an extent.
- MrYellowP 5y ago> The fact that short days and darkness cause so many people problems in the winter tells me that amount of sunlight really matters to us. For the greatest part of our history we've spent our time outside, not sitting in artificial caves with artificial lights, hiding from the sun. If you want something that tells you why the sun is so important, take this instead. If that doesn't work for you, remember that having enough exposure to the sun is vital for your body to function properly, both mentally and physically. We'd not be producing "Vitamin D" by being exposed for some time, if the sun wasn't an important factor in our existence.
- Thlom 5y agoAfter 35 I've more and more noticed how the long darkness affects my mental health. I'm not in northern Norway, so the sun rises all year, but during winter it comes up after I go to work and sets before I go home. So it's basically dark all the time. Supplementing vitamin D seems to help somewhat at least.
- boondaburrah 5y agoSchool should be made later. I suffered even with switching because no matter what part of the year we were in school was scheduled to wake me up in the dark.
- kirse 5y agoBut the sun does affect how well and how long they sleep Yes, the sun coming up an hour later means less light peeking into the room and more sleep cycle time. Big collective win for night owls. As it's a struggle already, getting up an hour earlier is going to be harder for them Times are changing, literally. Nice thing about all this remote work is you can be a night owl on the East Coast while everyone else is a morning lark on the West Coast. For me waking up is never an issue, I just get moving. But the night owl schedule is where everything naturally settles.
- baby 5y agoIt’s like taking something that was set up to do A, and saying that we shouldn’t deprecate it because it’s going to do B
- jyrkesh 5y agoIf lockdown WFH has taught me anything, it's that the times that we've set for doing activities day-to-day is totally arbitrary. I work with people across all timezones now, and it's clear that the way that I set the clock is just a pacing metric for the way that my job and the businesses around me give me the freedom to do what I need to do. If what you're saying is true, schools should start at 10a. We need to have those conversations. I'm on one coast, my coworkers are on another, we gotta figure out how to sync our meetings. Same goes with when the supermarkets are open. Most of us are not farming anymore. It's just about having a consistent meter stick to which to adjust our standards.
- nrdvana 5y agoSorry, the "farming" myth is one of my ocd triggers. DST is for golf courses and has never had anything to do with farming. Businesses want more daylight hours after office people get out of work to get those people to spend more money. This is the original trigger that caused the golf lobby to push congress to enact daylight savings. The problem is the "consistent yardstick" actually. People are accustomed to start work at "8am", and react badly to being told to start work at "7am". So we change the clock so that their yardstick "8am" occurs at solar 7am and people get out of work earlier. And people now are like "lets keep summer time" which is the exact equivalent of "lets always go to work at solar 7am".
- dsr_ 5y ago> People are accustomed to start work at "8am", and react badly to being told to start work at "7am". Retail workers and shift workers of all kinds constitute an existence disproof. "Next week you start at 5:30am, open at 6, finish at noon -- on Tuesday through Thursday, then you come in for 6pm to midnight on Friday. Welcome to Starbucks."
- nrdvana 5y agoIndeed its hard to generalize across all people. But I doubt many of those you list react favorably to the early times. Either way, they are likely not the ones wishing for permanent DST, because for some of them (like the ones waking up at clock 4:30am) it means they will go to sleep when the sun is still up (at solar 7pm) instead of after sunset.
- sizzle 5y agoWhat if you sleep with blindfolds on already? I’ve been messing with my body this whole time?
- greyhair 5y agoI have lived my whole adult life with black out shades and curtains. I grew up very rural and was used to a pitch black bedroom. As an adult I moved to the most densely populated state in the country, and immediately discovered black out shades.
- tsimionescu 5y agoYes, unless you have some programmed lights to help you wake up. Sleep normally ends as the sun starts shining. If you don't get that "signal", your body will have a harder time waking up, and be more confused about the right rhythm.
- sirspacey 5y agoThese problems are best solved by addressing the issue itself - that teenagers need more sleep than our maniacal obsession with starting school early in the morning. That’s a change that can, and should, be made independently.
- tsimionescu 5y agoSay you're a parent working for Walmart or Amazon. You have to get to work at 8.30AM so the store can open at 9AM. Your kid starts school at 9AM. How are you going to get your kid to school?
- SQueeeeeL 5y agoI love that in this scenario, school is literally daycare and we're completely limiting our entire children's growth around the imagined concerns of billion dollar mega corporations. Instead of forcing them to give leeway to the humans they employee, we just legit ruin kids carcadian rhythm
- tsimionescu 5y agoSchool being daycare or not has nothing to do with this issue. If your child needs to be somewhere at time T, you as a parent typically need to take them there at time T, so you can only arrive at work at some time T + delta. Now, while companies often have absurd requirements of their employees' time, I specifically chose the Wal-Mart example to illustrate a non-absurd requirement: a site needs its store clerks present at opening time to be able to open at opening time.
- mgalgs 5y ago> a site needs its store clerks present at opening time to be able to open at opening time. Surely not every employee has to do school drop-off in the morning though?
- detaro 5y agoGiven the context was explicitly "teenagers", getting to school is generally something kids can be expected to handle on their own. Admittedly having to arrive to early sucks for the few that truly rely on their parents to get there, but at least it only sucks for a few. (My school did start first at 8.30 (I think) and then 9, this is completely normal in many countries)
- globular-toast 5y agoChanging the clocks is basically a form of hibernation. It makes it OK for people to wake up later in winter by forcing everyone to do the same thing. I guess any form of coordination is going to be more convenient for some parties than for others. The question is whether we really need to coordinate our entire days to such an extent. Many companies already practise a "core hours" schedule which allows individuals to be flexible about when they start work. This seems like the right approach. I'm not looking forward to having to make normie appointments on Summer time during the winter, though. Making my way to the doctors at 5am in winter isn't going to be fun.
- eric_cc 5y agoBreaking out the "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" for daylight savings time? I think this is a very dramatic hypothesis you've presented here. If an individual or family is inconvenienced by this, adapt! Places that already do not change for DST are doing just fine. e.g. Arizona