LogFAQs > #963425960

Tennousu posted...

I'm not sure what is the point of daylight saving time. Timezones are already complicated enough, why would one make it even more complicated?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#Rationale

People realized that, in the summer when days are longer, the hour or so of sunlight that comes before people normally woke up was going to waste because everyone was still asleep. So by pushing the clocks ahead an hour, the sunrise instead happens around the same time as the average working person's wake up time, and there's an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day for people to use. However, this adjustment is unnecessary when the days are shorter (otherwise people would be waking up when it's still dark out) so it's only used during the warmer part of the year when days are longer. Hence the "spring forward" to save that hour of daylight during the summer and "fall back" to re-adjust for the winter.

In today's current society, when whether it's light or dark outside doesn't really matter to most jobs because a lot of us work inside and everyone has lights, it doesn't really help as much as it used to. So what was very helpful to society decades ago is more of a minor inconvenience today.