Over the last decade, countries and states around the world have abolished daylight saving time for various reasons, while other locations still cling to the practice despite health experts saying it is damaging. According to a 2023 analysis by Pew Research Center, half of countries globally previously observed these clock changes. Now, only about one third maintain the custom.
The bulk of the United States, most of Europe, and parts of Canada, Australia, Latin America, Brazil and the Caribbean have remained holdouts and still adjust their clocks. But plenty of places around the world have opted out of it entirely. These include all of Asia, and most of Africa. Over the past 10 years, Azerbaijan, Iran, Jordan, Namibia, Russia, Samoa, Syria, Turkey, Uruguay and most of Mexico have all ended the practice, according to the Pew Research Center.
Experts cite safety, health, and climate issues as reasons why daylight saving shifts should be abolished. Jagdish Khubchandani, professor of public health at New Mexico State University, shares that some research has indicated a correlation between clock shifts and health problems ranging from sleep disruptions to heart attacks. Time shifts disrupt circadian rhythms, also known as the sleep-wake cycle. Disruption has been shown to increase disease severity.
Researchers from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine wrote a 2020 position statement in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine noting that springing forwards is indeed harmful. The researchers use 'social jet lag' as a term to describe the chronic misalignment between one's natural sleep-wake cycle and life's demands from work, school and family, noting that daylight saving directly causes that social jet lag. Social jet lag is associated with obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and depression.
In December 2024, Donald Trump indicated that he wanted to end daylight saving time in the US, describing it as 'inconvenient' and 'very costly', but when asked in March 2025 about the issue, the US president took a step back, saying it was a '50-50 issue'.
