Clocks are about to spring forward. Why does Pennsylvania still use daylight saving time?

Daylight saving time (commonly known as “ daylight savings time”) begins this weekend, meaning clocks will move ahead one hour this Sunday.

Unlike the fall back to standard time in November, the March reset might mean losing some sleep. Here’s everything you need to know about the time change and why Pennsylvania still participates in the time switch.

This year daylight saving time starts on Sunday, March 12 at 2 a.m. After that point, all clocks should be advanced one hour.

The practice of moving clocks forward one hour in the spring and back one hour in the fall has origins more misconstrued than most, with people saying it was invented to help farmers have more time to harvest, or that Benjamin Franklin created it in the 1700s. However, both are wrong.

In the U.S., the practice dates back to 1918, when it was enacted year-round in a global effort to save on energy costs during World War I. It was later implemented again for the same reason during World War II. Then in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which put the practice of switching our clocks twice a year permanently into place.

Since its inception, the practice has been meant to conserve energy — and while that is technically true and a benefit of daylight saving time — it should be noted only a limited amount of energy is saved in the process, according to a 2017 analysis of previous studies done on daylight saving time’s impact on energy consumption.

Yes, some state legislators have been trying to switch to one standard of time for the past few years. The attempt closest to passing the law was in 2021, when the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed a bill to allow Pennsylvania to permanently switch to year-round daylight saving time. However, the bill failed to pass the State Senate.

State Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Lehigh) has introduced this bill a few times in hopes to end the switching of clocks twice a year. To him, public opinion speaks for itself — people don’t like the practice. However, figuring out which standard of time to go with is more difficult.

As it stands now, the Uniform Time Act allows states to not participate in daylight saving time, and instead use standard time year-round, which states like Arizona and Hawaii have implemented. However, the law does not allow states to switch to permanent year-round daylight saving times — that can only happen if the federal government passes a law to allow it.

“I would choose either option over the current practice,” said Mackenzie. “At the same time, I think permanent Daylight Savings Time has additional benefits that have brought me to the point of supporting this proposal.”

In 2021, the U.S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act to allow states to make that permanent year-round switch to daylight saving time, but that bill has been stalled in the legislative process.

While legislators continue to debate a permanent change, Pennsylvania will still switch clocks twice a year in the meantime.

Does switching our clocks back and forth twice a year still make sense? The majority of the U.S. doesn’t think so, with 71% of Americans saying they would prefer ending the practice, according to a 2019 study conducted by the University of Chicago’s research organization AP-NORC.

According to that study, 40% of participants would rather use standard time, and 31% wanted to use daylight saving time. Regarding which one is better to use, there are a few pros and cons. Either way, switching our clocks back and forth twice a year isn’t the healthiest, as research shows that the abrupt one-hour shift in time leads to more heart attacks, strokes and automobile accidents each year.

The primary benefit to daylight saving time is that you have more time in the afternoon and evenings to meet friends, enjoy time outdoors and get stuff done while it’s still light out. It also conserves a small amount of energy in some cases.

While many people will prefer that extended daylight in the evenings, you could be waking up in the dark in the mornings. Also, according to health and sleep experts, daylight saving time pushes back our natural sleep schedule.

When colder months arrive, clock times are moved back one hour to allow for more morning light — this is called standard time. More light in the mornings is what our bodies naturally evolved to be used to, and it helps reset the brain’s internal clock (or “circadian rhythm”) each morning and signals our body to go to sleep when the sun sets at night.

The primary benefit of standard time is that our bodies’ sleep schedules prefer extra sunlight in the morning.

Also, standard time was devised to align with the 24-hour solar clock, which means the sun should be at its peak when the clock strikes noon. This solar alignment works well with the summer and winter solstices, whereas permanent daylight saving time could lead to some places, like Washington D.C., to have days that see as much as 15 hours of sunlight and as little as 9 hours of daylight in the summer and winter solstices, respectively. There’s usually — give or take — 12 hours of sunlight on an average day.

The con of standard time is that evenings will be dark at an earlier time, and there will be fewer opportunities to do activities in the daylight and enjoy the sunshine after work and school.