How time changes impact public sentiment in the U.S.

(Press-News.org) Individuals have a more negative reaction to the societal time change to Standard Time (ST) in the fall than to Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the spring, according to a study published March 4, 2026, in the open-access journal PLOS One. The findings were reported by Ben Ellman, an independent researcher in Illinois, Michael Smith of the Purdue University College of Agriculture, U.S., and colleagues.

The U.S. instituted DST in 1918 shortly after joining World War I, advancing local time by an hour in late spring or early summer under the theory that the extra sunlight in the evenings would lead to energy savings needed for the war effort. However, research has suggested that the biannual societal time change remains broadly unpopular, has economic costs, affects public health and wellbeing, and is frequently threatened with policy action.

In this study, Ellman, Smith, and colleagues assessed individual responses to biannual time changes using sentiment analysis of social media posts scraped from mainly X/Twitter within a 20-day span, on either side of the time changes across the U.S between 2019 and 2023, using the Quid (formerly Netbase) Social Media Listening platform. The dataset of mentions was collected.

The results showed that both time changes have negative impacts on social media sentiment. This negative shock persists after the change to ST in the fall but attenuates relatively quickly after the switch to DST in spring. The findings suggest that the move to ST in the fall is more negatively perceived than the move to DST in the spring. Authors caution that sentiment towards time changes is a complex behavioral response and therefore, there could be additional sociodemographic characteristics which they have not considered in their study. Future research stemming from this study could explore whether one time regimen (ST or DST) is preferred, as authors have not measured this.

The authors add: “Our findings provide evidence that individuals have a negative reaction to both time jumps in spring and fall, and that this reaction is more negative in the fall as we change to Standard Time, than in the Spring when we switch to DST.”

 

 

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4qRldM1

Citation: Ellman B, Smith ML, Reeling C, Widmar NJO (2026) Social media analysis reflects the negative sentiments experienced at both time changes with somewhat more depressive impact in early fall. PLoS One 21(3): e0342789. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0342789

Author countries: U.S.

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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