Only the far north of Norway has a long polar night, down south the days are short but not much different to many other places. In the north, the winter causes more sleep problems and some low mood/energy. (sources below)
But this is false equivalence as it's studying a different thing. Also it is very difficult to compare mental health studies across countries and attribute differences to single causes as there are so many confounding factors. In Norway there is a good standard of living, a social safety net, cheap healthcare and many other factors that are proven to be beneficial to mental health.
Humans are adaptable but sometime I think it's more accurate to say that humans tolerate different environments. We often don't adapt to them, we cope with them.
> A -permanent- hour change would surely be less harmful than changing said hours twice a year.
If you ask actual scientists who research this topic, you get a different answer:
"The authors take the position that, based on comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently"
I don't think this article has made that case at all. They are correct that there are negative health effects for people being on the western edge of time zones because their social clocks are earlier than their biological clocks. But this is because people synchronize their social clocks with people in their time zones. But if an entire timezone shifts by an hour, they will naturally adjust their social clocks. As a thought experiment, imagine shifting the time zone by 12 hours, so midnight was called noon and noon was called midnight. People would simply shift their social clocks by 12 hours to adjust.
An actual example of this is Spain, which since WWII has been on the central European time zone, even though it is in Western Europe. According to this article, people in Spain should have more health problems and shorter lifespans, because their social clock is so much earlier than their body clocks. However as everyone who has ever been to Spain knows, the social clock in Spain does not have the same relationship to the wall clock as it does in other countries. In fact, relative to say the US, the social clock in Spain seems to be shifted a good two hours, for example with dinner at 9pm or 10pm. That seems like a very late hour for dinner, but relative to the sun that's more like 8pm.
So maybe moving to different timezone would make more sense? Start using the zone that is closest to where majority of population reside. Or even use more than one zone?
That article mentions the downsides of switching from ST to DST, but doesn't mention the downsides of switching back. It's as biased as it gets.
If you already know what outcome you want it's easy to assemble evidence that supports that position, but it's not science, and this article is one of the best examples of that I've ever seen.
The author of the paper has examined the body of research and come to an informed conclusion, which they are sharing alongside their reasoning. Should the author instead present a case they think is wrong?
I can think of a thing or 50 that Norway does different tk the US that might explain their higher levels of educational achievement and better mental health.
Norway is one of the richest countries in the world – because they have so much oil – and they share the wealth with the people through social security and (mostly) free education and health care.
I think that has much more influence on those factors than light.
The meaning is that permanent standard time is preferable to permanent DST, because it's more important during winter: during summer you get plenty of sunlight no matter what you have on the clock. That is, if we optimize for health instead of shopping.
I disagree on summer time, summer time makes they day on which it's possible to do outdoor activities in the evening come about three weeks earlier than without it. And sunlight around 5am when virtually everyone is asleep is much more useless than having it late in the evening.
1. Comparing the US (or any other country) to Norway is not valid because there are so many confounding variables. For one, Norway sinks in oil money and uses that money extensively to fund great social welfare programs.
2. What matters is relative within a country, not between country. The US had the choice between two time zones, and that's the question at stake here (not how the US compares to other countries, or how other countries deal with short day light periods).
As a seattlite, darkness in the winter definitely effects me. This is why I’d rather have the extra hours of daylight when I’m awake, since it increases the chance of hitting a few hours of light without rain/overcast skies.
If I lived in a society where I got to set my own times, that would work perfectly. Get my kid up at six, force daycare to open and close an hour earlier, and have my meeting schedule displaced an hour earlier (hey, works well for those VCs to Stockholm, but those people are always in the dark in the winter).
They said wake up an hour early, not late, which has absolutely no impact on externally-imposed schedules. You have an extra hour to do X, whether that be exercise, getting baked out of your mind, scrolling instagram, etc.
You can't tell me that a society that burns, on average, five and a half hours daily on useless, mindless activities like television, sportsball, and social media is going to be even mildly perturbed by this. There's plenty of slack in the average person's schedule to move things around.
Compared to what? Anytime I speak to any Norwegian/Swede, they tell me how depression during winter is so widespread basically everybody suffers in one way or another. People in Norway, Sweden, Finland etc go into household lightning overdrive to help this a bit, but real sun is real sun.
Single most important reason why I never moved there, even above short summer.
After 35 I've more and more noticed how the long darkness affects my mental health. I'm not in northern Norway, so the sun rises all year, but during winter it comes up after I go to work and sets before I go home. So it's basically dark all the time. Supplementing vitamin D seems to help somewhat at least.
> The fact that short days and darkness cause so many people problems in the winter tells me that amount of sunlight really matters to us.
For the greatest part of our history we've spent our time outside, not sitting in artificial caves with artificial lights, hiding from the sun. If you want something that tells you why the sun is so important, take this instead.
If that doesn't work for you, remember that having enough exposure to the sun is vital for your body to function properly, both mentally and physically. We'd not be producing "Vitamin D" by being exposed for some time, if the sun wasn't an important factor in our existence.
Highly educated, longest living, least depressed.
And the sun is out at midnight 76 days per year there.
Humans are adaptable. A -permanent- hour change would surely be less harmful than changing said hours twice a year.