2 days ago
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Twice a year we change the clocks. For many it is not clear why and how this change affects us. So last October, with the help of the Guardian, a group of scientists at Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Oxford conducted a nationwide survey to understand the impact on people’s daily lives.
More than 12,000 people answered questions about their wellbeing, satisfaction with life and stress levels, completing the survey in the week before the clocks went back and again in the days immediately after. When we compared the responses, we found that women’s mental health and wellbeing suffered in the immediate aftermath of the clocks going back, while men experienced greater wellbeing and greater satisfaction with life. So what does this tell us about the way we experience time?
The changing of the clocks – introduced in Britain during the first world war – is a long debated issue. For some people, it provides a welcome sign of the changing seasons. However, this is not the case for everyone. Our analysis showed that women were more likely to associate the autumn clock changing with worry, confusion, guilt and stress. The fact that we observed these differences within one or two days of the clock change suggests that it caused the negative effects, rather than the gradual accumulation of dark nights. As one female participant said: “I am spinning out of control. Mind is overactive. Very behind in tasks. No idea what time it is.”
Women reported particular difficulty in adjusting young children to the new routine. Disrupted bedtimes and difficulty getting them ready on time in the morning added additional stress to family life. Many women reported that after the October clock change, their sense of the days dragging increased. In our analysis of the sentiment of written accounts, we found men reporting significantly more positive experiences than women. One felt he had “accomplished more already” in the “extra” hour.
Both men and women also reported a worsening of work-life balance following the changing of the clocks in October. Perhaps the sudden change to darker evenings reduces how much time we feel we have outside the working day for ourselves. While dark nights are unavoidable during winter, the overnight clock change prevents us from gently adjusting over a period of weeks. As one female participant said: “The feeling of the sudden darkness this evening filled me with dread for the dark months … A gradual daily shift would be so much easier to cope with.” In a society in which burnout is a leading cause of absence from work, the health and economic consequences of a policy that impairs work-life balance should clearly be closely monitored.
For lovers of lighter evenings, however, there is also bad news about the coming switch to British summer time. Research suggests that the spring clock change is associated with an increase in car accidents and heart attacks. There is also some evidence to suggest that it may negatively affect mental wellbeing, with the change in time appearing to exacerbate symptoms in people with pre-existing conditions such as seasonal affective disorder and depression.
Perhaps waking earlier makes us feel as though we have even less time than before, increasing stress levels and reducing satisfaction with life. It might only be one hour that we “lose”, but the effects for wellbeing may be substantial. To understand this, we are inviting Guardian readers to take part in our new study exploring the impact of the spring clock change on wellbeing.
Some of these negative effects of the clock change may be explained by its impact on our biological clock. Circadian rhythms, which dictate when we eat and sleep, become disrupted by the changing time – a bit like jet lag but without the joy of travel. Disruption to sleep and the burden of adjusting to a new rhythm can raise levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which if prolonged can leave us more vulnerable to a range of physical and mental health conditions. Such negative consequences for health and wellbeing led the American Medical Association to propose that we should stop changing the clocks altogether.
Our work on clock changes makes us think about the effects of time more generally. This work is part of a bigger project where we look at all the ways in which the power of time is used to shape society and our lives within it. This work always tells us the same tale: our experience of time is a barometer for our wellbeing. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, 80% of people felt as though time warped as a result of lockdown measures. Those who struggled with the loss of routine and social interactions experienced longer, slower lockdowns than those who thrived under lockdown conditions.
Impositions of time, such as clock changes and lockdowns, illustrate how modern life puts us at the mercy of the ticking of a clock. It is the invisible hand of power that forces us to do things, often without our realising. Our bodies have evolved to be carefully attuned to our environments. We thrive on having predictable rhythms around when we sleep, eat, work and socialise. These rhythms keep us in sync with our bodies and communities, helping to give us a sense of belonging and stability.
Now, however, work and sleep are no longer cued by the emergence of light, but by the demands of corporations. Advances in digital technology mean that many of us never really switch off. Our time is becoming ever denser as we strive to fill every moment with productivity, leaving many people burnt out, ill and exhausted. In our current state of time poverty, it is no wonder that a sudden change in clock time causes stress and disruption. Maybe it isn’t just the hour change we need to rethink.
The implications of these types of time-based policies are rarely experienced equally across society. Time policies that benefit some often have profound personal, social and economic consequences for others. Understanding the implications of external impositions of time is therefore critical to developing fairer, more equitable policies.
We could start by looking at the changing of the clocks. But, ultimately, if we want to feel as if we have more time, fundamental shifts in societal expectations about time, working practices and gender roles are required. Maybe if we had a right to free time, a guaranteed block during which we could switch off from the demands of the world around us, we could all live happier, healthier lives.
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Ruth Ogden is professor of the psychology of time at Liverpool John Moores University. Her study of the effects of clocks changing was undertaken with Prof Patricia Kingori, a sociologist at the University of Oxford’s Ethox Centre
