Daylight Saving Time: The Online Backlash, Explained

It’s almost Spring and that means one thing: the clocks jumping forward across the United States. The 2025 edition of Daylight Saving Time (DST) is here, and, as always, sparked fierce debate online.

While there are constant discussions about whether to change Daylight Saving Time, social media provides people a place to discuss this issue and ones similar to it. This is particularly interesting as, in the past, these sort of topics were not given the same air time in traditional media.

This is a prime example of how the internet has forever altered public discussion.

Daylight Saving Time began in the U.S. on Sunday, March 9, 2025. At 2am, the clocks sprung forward, reading 3am. At this point most states moved into DST. Effectively, people “lost” an hour of sleep, something many online are upset about.

This Daylight Saving Time period ends on Nov 2, 2025, where people will “gain” an hour back, with the clock going backwards. Something that’s normally a cause for celebration, as people receive another hour in the day.

Long story short, the reason Daylight Saving Time exists is to try and preserve as much of the sun as possible. The idea is to match daylight to the period that most people are awake. Scientifically, this move has both pros and cons, with their being health benefits to more sun in the morning and keeping time static:

Increasingly though, Daylight Savings Time has become a point of debate, with a wide variety of responses online, ranging from those who love the practice all the way to the polar opposite.

This begs an interesting question: what’s driving this vehement and passionate discussion online? And what does it say about our modern world?

Why Is There A Fierce Debate Around Daylight Saving Time?

A recent poll from Gallup shows that U.S. adults have drastically changed their opinion of Daylight Saving Time. In 1999, 73% of people were in favor of the shift, yet in 2025 this has dropped to merely 40%.

In fact, now 54% of people are against Daylight Saving Time. They don’t want to see the clocks springing forward or falling back at all.

This high-water mark in 1999 to today’s low is particularly fascinating, because it aligns with the growth of the internet.

Data shows that about 35% of the U.S. population was on the internet in 1999, something that was on a rapid growth path. Merely eight years later in 2007, 75% of the country was online.

Alongside this internet penetration, this era also saw the birth of social media. Although it’s now something that we take for granted today, one of its revolutionary aspects was giving the public at large a place to discuss the things that bothered them. Literally, it platformed people.

Previously, many of the big discussion points of the time were driven through more traditional media, such as newspapers or the television. While this serves an important purpose, it does rely on a comparatively small subsection of society to define what’s “newsworthy” or not.

Social media changed that. The ability for people to discuss elements that directly impacted their lives—but maybe aren’t crucial to the workings of the world—gave rise to discussions around topics like Daylight Saving Time.

These platforms are perfectly suited for this sort of discussion. Places like Twitter/X, Facebook, or Instagram spotlight posts with high levels of engagement, and a topic like Daylight Saving Time is something that effects almost everyone. This makes it ideal online fodder.

Now, due to the nature of these algorithms, lots of the discussion that gets highlighted is that showing strong opinion. What this can lead to then is a situation like Daylight Saving Time, where something that was broadly accepted for decades becomes a flashpoint where many fall on one side or the other.

All-in-all, this is a perfect summary of how social media has changed the world. Daylight Saving Time is a topic that impacts everyone in the U.S. on some level, but wasn’t a priority discussion in times gone by.

The democratization of the internet changed that. Daylight Saving Time is now catapulted to the front of the news, and dominates discussion both online and offline two times every year. Social media may end up actively changing time itself, and if that doesn’t show its power, what else can?