Get ready to reset your clocks and lose an hour of sleep — daylight saving time is upon us.
Clocks will spring forward an hour at 2 a.m. Sunday, meaning one less hour of sleep for most people across the U.S.
The change also means one more hour of sunlight in the evening. In Boston, this will bump sunrise back to just after 7 a.m. and sunset to about 6:45 p.m. Daylight saving time lasts from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November, just under eight months.
With the promise of another round of jarred sleeping schedules and clock confusion, biannual debates on the subject are again kicking into high gear.
Despite heavy debate on the practice, about 40% of countries worldwide — including much of Europe and parts of Canada and Australia — opt to participate in what Americans call daylight savings time.
The time change practice was first proposed in the 1890s by an astronomer and entomologist — or insect researcher — in New Zealand, but the idea didn’t gain traction until World War I. Germany began adjusting their clocks during the first world war with the idea that the practice would save energy. The U.S., among other countries, soon followed.
The time change, then called “war time,” was more permanently reinstated in the U.S. during World War II and continued on. The practice was formalized across states in the Uniform Time Act of 1966. The Act allows states to opt-out and observe standard time but not to observe daylight saving time year-round. The country briefly adopted year-round daylight saving during an energy crisis in the 1970s, but opponents shut down the change quickly.
Massachusetts is one of many states to take on the debate of whether to ditch daylight saving.
Currently, two bills are circulating the state Legislature to establish “sunshine protection” and place the Commonwealth under Atlantic Standard Time. The bills include provisions that the change should only go into effect if two other states within New England, plus New York, adopt the change.
Congress has also taken up the issue, proposing bills to make daylight saving time permanent — the Sunshine Protection Act, which was approved by the Senate in 2022 — and allow states to opt for permanent daylight saving time.
Currently, Hawaii and Arizona are the only states that elect to remain on standard time all year round. U.S. territories American Samoa, Guam, the North Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands also opt to not fiddle with their clocks twice a year.
Arizona ditched the time change in 1967 to avoid an extra hour in the sun during their hottest months, while Hawaii and territories opted out because the time change has so little effect closer to the equator.
In Massachusetts, both bills to reopen the debate have been delayed until at least July.
