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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

That’s why I believe switching to permanent summer time would be a big mistake and would make kids suffer a lot more than they already do.

Summer time in winter would mean getting up 1h earlier, in most locations.

EDIT: for those questioning the effect, because “school would still start at the same time (7:45 am)”.

Imagine if we didn’t change 1 hour but instead 12h, and then still says: “why don’t get up? My clock says it’s 7 am!”

We do have biological clocks and ideally these are in sync with our real world clocks.

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The EU will switch to permanent winter time as well: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/10/28/when-will-the-...

Discussion about that are on a low-point.

Quite honestly I particularly don't care if we stick to summer or winter time.

As long as I can wake up consistently at the same time and not have my sleep schedule destroyed for a couple of weeks twice per year. This clock changing business really messes me up and I see no actual benefit of it today.

It's better to have the most sunlight during you waking hours, which tend to be later in the day. People don't wake up at 6am and go to bed at 6pm, more like wake at 7 and go to bed at 11.

Maybe you and your social circle. I get to work at 6:30 AM; despite being fairly far south in the US, I wake up in full night and drive to work in nautical twilight around the winter solstice.

Even in summer, I wake just before the beginning of civil twilight.

Needless to say, a late night for me is 10 pm.

Spain effectively has the opposite. It's an hour ahead of London despite Grenwich meridian passing through both.

Actually Spain seems far better than England, as the daylight is more in line with sleeping hours. If the sunrise is 7am in Spain when it's 6 am in London.

At the end of the day, time is just a number and we are able to adjust to it changing twice a year with relative ease. If you want to sleep longer, go to bed an hour earlier.

That is... not how DST works.

What do you mean?

I think it's reasonable to assume the school will be starting at roughly the same clock time in all scenarios. That's the entire point of choosing between permanent winter and permanent summer time, isn't it?

So if you extend summer time into the months where the sun is already late to rise, now days that started at a nice hour have to start at the crack of dawn, days that started at the crack of dawn have to start an hour before dawn, and days that started long before dawn get even further before dawn.

Why is starting at crack of dawn bad? For night owls, so much daylight is wasted in the early morning hours. For children, they'll be shoved off into a classroom building at dawn any way, might as well enjoy more daylight after the schoolday.

What am I missing haha?

Teenagers naturally go to sleep later and wake up later. If their schools start early, that's bad for their health and their education.

In other words, they need that early morning sunlight to help keep a healthy schedule. It's not wasted.

> they need that early morning sunlight to help keep a healthy schedule

this is the part that I don't get.

So a teenager needs a later schoolday because they're night owls. 100% agreed with that. But why would they need the early morning daylight? They'll sleep that sunlight away anyway!

Wouldn't a shift to a later schoolday, with the DST shift of a later sunrise later, not complement each other very well? Rather than say, just shifting the schoolday later, but then have all that sunlight in the early morning when they are still sleeping.

Circadian rhythm is based on light cycles not a clock........

>For night owls, so much daylight is wasted in the early morning hours.

Not any more: it's better to sleep as much as possible during daylight hours, and spend more of your time outside after the sun has gone down.

The reason for this should be obvious by looking at any current weather report.

I think it’s kinda nuts that we discuss changing what time it is instead of like, “we should start work and school later in the day”

I mean sure changing the clocks for DST is silly and we should stop, but the discussions are almost always really about “everyone hates waking up super early for work and school”. We can fix this without changing our clocks.

That’s true. But good luck changing century old work schedules for teachers and parents. The reality is that most grownups don’t particularly care how kids and teenagers feel in the morning.

> That’s why I believe switching to permanent summer time would be a big mistake and would make kids suffer a lot more than they already do.

But school would start at the same time regardless. They'd still have to show up at 7:45 AM in the summer and the winter. (And 9-5s would still be 9-5s.)

Year-round summer time does mean more daylight to enjoy after work, which would probably be an economic boon to stores and restaurants if it enhances after work leisure.

> But school would start at the same time regardless. They'd still have to show up at 7:45 AM

Are you suggesting that the sun is irrelevant to whether someone is a morning person, and only the time on the clock matters?

> Are you suggesting that the sun is irrelevant to whether someone is a morning person, and only the time on the clock matters?

That wasn't my original argument at all, but yes - I'll argue this too.

I'm always sleepy in the "mornings" and get my best work done after I've been awake a while. It probably has more to do with metabolic flux than daylight.

I've occasionally worked so hard on things that I've had my schedule "wrap around" the clock, yet I still get the most work done in the back half of my day.

Given the vast difference in longitude places within the same time zone, I am fairly sure that argument could be made.

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