Daylight Saving Time is set to end this weekend, which means clocks will fall back one hour early Sunday morning at 2 a.m. 

For some, this shift may seem like a minor inconvenience, yet research shows time change can disrupt the body’s internal clock, making it harder to maintain focus and a constant sleep schedule, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. 

Jasmine Morales, a second-year business student, said her sleep feels thrown off because of Daylight Saving Time. 

“I always feel like my sleep is messed up for at least a week, even if it’s just one hour it changes how tired I feel, especially with morning classes … I’m not looking forward to it,” Morales said. 

Daylight Saving Time was first introduced nationally during World War I as a way to conserve fuel and electricity by shifting more activity into daylight hours, according to USAFacts. 

The U.S. later standardized the start and end dates through the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which is still the federal law that structures time changes nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Energy webpage

However, today the original energy-saving purpose is widely debated. 

Proposition 7  passed in 2018 to give the legislature the power to change the daylight saving time period, if the federal law allows it, according to Ballotpedia and the California Secretary of State’s voter guide.

The disruption to sleep-wake cycles may outweigh any energy benefits, especially for younger adults whose schedules already vary from day to day, according to a research article published on June 8, 2020 from the National Institutes of Health.

Students already often juggle jobs, coursework, commuting and late-night studying, which makes their sleep schedules more irregular to begin with. 

College students face a significant burden of insomnia and poor sleep quality, with more than a quarter of students in one study experiencing clinical insomnia, according to a research article published on Sept. 15, 2022 by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Lee Chang, a first-year kinesiology student, said he works late nights and Daylight Saving Time  leaves him feeling out of it.

“I work late shifts and then have early classes, so any little change normally makes me feel out of sync for days,” Chang said.

Although the transition in November does give most people an extra hour of sleep, it also shifts the sunset earlier.

This means students who walk or commute in the late afternoon may suddenly find themselves traveling home in the dark.

The earlier sunset after the fall shift increased pedestrian and roadway risks, according to the National Institutes of Health .

Daniel Aguilar, a fourth-year engineering student, said the sun setting earlier can be unsettling in multiple aspects.

“When it gets dark earlier it feels so depressing and having to walk to my car gets creepy lowkey … campus feels so quiet and alone,” Aguilar said.

Despite increasing criticism, Daylight Saving Time remains in place partly because of public disagreement about what time system should replace it. 

According to a poll from YouGov in 2023, 62% of Americans want to stop changing the clocks each year, according to a 2023poll from YouGov.

However, states cannot simply choose to make Daylight Saving Time permanent on their own.

Under federal law, a state may opt out of observing Daylight Saving Time entirely (as Arizona and Hawaii have), but no state can choose to make Daylight Saving Time permanent without congressional approval, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. 

In 2022, the U.S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would have made Daylight Saving Time permanent nationwide, but the bill stalled in the House and no replacement has passed since, according to Congress.

So for now, the time change remains.

On Sunday at 2 a.m., clocks will shift back one hour to 1 a.m., giving students a little extra sleep or maybe an extra hour of fun.

“At least it lands on hallo-weekend this year which means an extra hour of being out,” Aguilar said.