When one thinks of daylight savings, they may imagine teens savoring long summer nights on the beach, but in reality, there is a lot more behind the time change than merely “more fun.” In reality, the reasoning behind the time change is rather ignored. A majority of society rationalize their opinion as to whether or not daylight savings should exist with uneducated responses. Nonetheless it is important to be educated on a topic that affects the daily life of all.

Popular belief is that daylight savings was originally implemented in order to provide farmers with more workable hours. Nonetheless, this is false. Despite the fact that farmers may receive an extra hour to farm, they are forced to start their day an hour later, offsetting the advantage of the daylight savings. Thus, all this time change does for the agrarian lifestyle is prevent them from getting home to their families for a whole hour.

The question is: if daylight savings is not for farming, what is it for? Well, it is mostly to get better use out of the daylight. The time change moves the extra hour of daylight from the morning, when most people are sleeping, to the evening, when most people are awake. This helps to discourage sedentary habits and causes people to get out of the house and stay active for the extra hour of sunlight. Additionally, the tourism industry grows tremendously from the implementation of daylight savings. Shoppers and customers are able to enjoy the day for an extra hour before heading back to their hotel. Lastly, it saves energy. If an extra hour of the night time is spent in natural light, that diminishes the need to use electricity as much as possible.The cons, on the other hand, are as follows. Not only is the time change costly and rather inconvenient, but it also directly affects school life. Because it is extremely dark in the morning, students are forced to arrive at school (especially if they attend a zero period course) when it is dark out. This is not only unfavorable, but also rather dangerous.

Because it directly affects students, it is important to know their opinions on such a topic. A majority of the students questioned prefer daylight savings. Tiger Ortiz (10) explained that, “Daylight Savings is awesome because it not only makes it feel like summer again, but also during the summer, there is an extra hour to go out and have fun before it gets dark.” This opinion of his seems to be very popular within high school aged kids despite the fact that the time change causes it to be dark when they arrive to school. Recently, the implementation or cancellation of Daylight Savings was put on the California state voting ballot as Proposition 7. So far, it is continuing to be implemented; however, it is hard to tell what the future will hold.

All in all, there is an all out debate as to whether or not we, as society, should take the time and money to make the time change each year. No matter one’s personal opinion on the topic, it is important that they support their opinion with educated facts.