AS LONG AS EVERYONE SWITCHES TO EASTERN STANDARD TIME:

Older Americans, it turns out, are also much more likely than younger Americans to dislike the time changes. The Economist/YouGov poll found that an overwhelming majority of respondents 65 and over (77 percent) wanted to eliminate the twice-yearly time change compared with less than half of respondents age 18 to 29 (42 percent). To be clear, those younger people aren't strongly in favor of keeping the clock change: They were just about as likely to say they didn't want to change the clocks (27 percent) as they were to say they weren't sure (31 percent). But they were also less in favor of permanent daylight saving time than older people were, by 30 percent to 54 percent.

This division could hint at one of the big reasons why people really don't like changing the clocks: It can be physically disruptive. Messing with sleep patterns can affect our eating habits or mental functioning throughout the day. And an abrupt shift like adding or losing an hour can be especially troublesome for older people, who may already have more fragmented sleep. It can also upset bedtimes and nap routines for small children, and even make pets fussy.

But in exchange for later sunsets, people have to be OK with dark mornings. And that's not a universally popular tradeoff. Americans actually experimented with permanent daylight saving time starting in January 1974, and it didn't go well. As reported in The Washington Post, support for year-round daylight saving time fell from a majority in late 1973 to around 30 percent in February and March 1974. According to Louis Harris polling that March, people were much more likely to say the change was a bad idea (43 percent) than a good one (19 percent). Parents who found themselves sending their children to school on pitch-black, cold winter mornings were particularly upset.1 But anyone who wakes up on the early side -- which many Americans do -- might also dislike slogging through an extra hour of darkness as they begin their day. 

Some sleep scientists have argued that permanent standard time is more in sync with our body's natural rhythms. We might like an extra hour of light at the end of the day, their argument goes, but we need that extra hour of morning light.

Tweet   @brothersjudd