Many Southeast Floridians have a lot of confusion about Daylight Savings Time. Daylight Saving Time officially ended at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November the 6, 2022. For decades, shifting the clocks during the months that have the most sunlight was promoted to save energy.
Millions of Americans want to abandon daylight saving time each year. It disrupts our circadian rhythms and creates confusion. More than a third of U.S. states now back a permanent shift to daylight saving time. If that happens, it would be a final victory for a plan that businesses have praised for more than one hundred years.
For decades, shifting the clocks during the months that have the most sunlight was promoted to save energy. In the late 1700s, Benjamin Franklin was a prominent supporter of daylight saving time. He "calculated that the city of Paris could save millions of pounds of candlewax every year if residents woke up early in the morning and went to bed early at night," according to the House of Representatives history blog.
Some say Daylight Saving Time is a moneymaker! Michael Downing, a professor at Tufts University wrote . Downing stated, "What we don't tend to know as Americans is that the biggest lobby on behalf of daylight saving since 1915 in this country — and to this very day — is the Chamber of Commerce. They understood something very early on: If you give workers daylight when they leave their jobs, they are much more apt to stop and shop on their way home." Interestingly, one of the earliest prominent backers of daylight saving was Abraham Lincoln Filene (of Filene's Department Stores), who happened to be a driving force behind the movement during World War I.
Daylight Saving Time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday of November. Clocks are on “standard time” the rest of the year. But despite confusion on social media, Daylight Saving Time is not becoming permanent (or ending) next year. In March, the U.S. Senate approved a bill known as the Sunshine Protection Act to make daylight saving time permanent nationwide.
