Americans dislike daylight savings in general, but the move to standard time was more unpopular than the move to daylight savings. This is surprising as 'falling back' allows an hour more sleep, while 'springing forward' means an hour less shut eye.

We quantify the effect of biannual time changes on sentiment using US online and social media posts from periods around changes to Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the spring and Standard Time (ST) in the fall over the period 2019–2023. We compare sentiment—a measure of individuals overall mood or emotions towards an event—in cities on either side of US time zones the day before and after the societal time change. We find negative shocks to sentiment following both time changes. …