this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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DST in the winter would suck so much. Think of all the worsened seasonal depressive disorders (aka winter depression). If the alternative would mean an increase in suicide numbers I will gladly endure the annoyance of changing my clocks twice a year.
Then again if we could abolish DST - yeah I'd be down for that. But too many people think getting rid of standard time will make our winters more like our summers. But it won't. It will make them worse. Our biology isn't meant to wake up three hours before sunrise.
I don't understand -- wouldn't it be better to have an extra hour of daylight in the evening through winter? For me, the most depressing thing about the clocks falling back is that the sun is setting an hour earlier, not that it's rising an hour earlier.
Waking up and starting the day in darkness is even more detrimental to mental health than spending the evening in the dark, because light stimulation in the morning is what actually aligns our inner clock. DST all year round would shift our circadian rhythm and social time further apart, worsening sleeping problems and affective disorders.
But don't take my word for it - there are many smarter people than me who actually researched this. For example:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0748730419854197
https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9208433/