Daylight Savings Is Approaching—With This Major Downside

Daylight savings time is rapidly approaching. On Sunday, March 8, clocks in the U.S. will "spring forward" one hour at 2 a.m., resulting in a lost hour of sleep. If you find it difficult to adjust to this annual time change, you're not alone.

Daylight Savings Time Jars Your Circadian Rhythm

"That one-hour change may not seem like much, but it can wreak havoc on people's mental and physical well-being in the short term," Dr. Charles Czeisler of Harvard Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine told USA Today. This is because it upsets your body's circadian rhythm, which gets used to your wake and sleep cycles and adjusts its functions appropriately. It also regulates your mood and brain functions — and a disruption in the rhythm can thus result in a disruption of your mood and brain functions.

For example, during daylight savings, it stays dark out earlier but stays light out later. This could make your body produce less serotonin in the morning, altering your mood and contributing to seasonal affective disorder (SAD). It also could make your body produce less melatonin at night, making it harder to sleep. And so the vicious cycle continues.

A Stanford Medicine study found that daylight savings time was actually detrimental to Americans' health due to the biannual disruption of the circadian rhythm. Per the researchers' findings, we should just pick one and stick with it.

The Movement to End Daylight Savings Time

The twice-yearly time change isn't popular among the public either — at all. According to an October 2025 poll by the AP, only 12 percent of American adults support it. By contrast, 47 percent were against it.

President Donald Trump has even taken a stand against daylight savings time. Shortly after the 2024 election, he vowed to end the unpopular practice, writing in a social media post (via AP), "Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation." He reiterated this stance in April 2025 (via AP), calling it "a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!!"