An event that only happens twice a year, an event that you either hate or love, it’s daylight savings! Daylight savings is when we advance or move back our clocks to fit the weather. When Summer is coming around, we advance our clocks by one hour to extend the daylight so the darkness comes later in the night. This helps us to be able to enjoy the nice weather before it gets dark and breezing outside. When the fall comes around, we bring back our clocks one hour, giving us an extra hour of sleep. This is to give us more winter daylight in the morning. Daylight savings always starts on the second week in March and ends the first Sunday in November. We in New Jersey participate in daylight savings because of our mixed weather, but not every state does. 

While forty eight out of fifty states participate, Hawaii and Arizona do not. This is because of Arizona’s desert weather and Hawaii’s proximity to the equator. Hawaii is considered part of the USA but it is not connected to the other states by land. Both states have enough sunlight on their own, so they do not need to minus or add an hour year round. 

Daylight savings was only first introduced to the United States in 1918 because of the first World War. They first started it to reserve the cost of fuel and energy. When asked where daylight savings originated, student Sophia Cameron said, “I think it’s for farmers so they can grow their crops more in the seasons.” The saying that daylight saving was created for farmers is not true and is actually a myth. The United States was not the first country in the world to adopt the idea of daylight savings. We should be giving our credit to New Zealand, who was the first country to adopt the idea in 1895. Even though former president Benjamin Franklin mentioned the idea over one hundred years before New Zealand, he only toyed with the idea and did not fully put it forward. 

Some think that daylight savings is useless and “spring forward” also known as losing an hour of sleep, messes up workers morning schedule. Mrs. Seaman when interviewed about daylight savings said, “I think that we should leave the clocks alone.” Daylight savings back in 1918 was used to save money in the World War, now that the War is over and the time change is just for the weather, should we still be doing Daylight Savings?