In the spring of 2022, something amazing happened. No, I’m not talking about everyone changing their clocks by one hour for no good reason. Unfortunately, that happens twice every year. I’m talking about the U.S. Senate passing a bill by unanimous consent to eliminate that pointless tradition.

When a house of Congress unanimously passes anything in this era of partisan gridlock and division, you know it’s something reasonable. In this case, it was exceptionally so. The bill in question, my Sunshine Protection Act, is pure common sense.

Think about it. Why do we “fall back” and “spring forward,” year after year after year? It’s not because of the movements of the sun and moon. It’s not because of popular preference − at least 19 states, including my home state of Florida, would enact yearlong daylight saving time if Congress would let them. And it’s definitely not because of concerns for public health.

In fact, when we revert to standard time on Sunday, public health is likely to decline. For one, it will get darker much earlier in the day. This is problematic for our entire society, which gets far too little exercise and far too much indoor screen time.

But it is especially problematic for our kids. I know from personal experience that children are happier and healthier when they spend their after-school hours playing football in the park than when they go straight home to their bedrooms.

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That’s not all, either. According to several scientific studies, the stress imposed on our bodies by abruptly changing time may cause a 6% increase in car crashes, an 8% increase in strokes, an 11% increase in depression and a 24% increase in heart attacks.

With all these downsides, why do we carry on with changing the clocks?

Many people believe that we do so to benefit farmers, but that’s not true. We fall back and spring forward simply because of antiquated energy conservation measures from World War I. Those measures probably made sense at the time, but it doesn’t mean they make sense now, more than 100 years later.

The bottom line is this. If a substantial portion of our population wants to eliminate the time change (it does), and if there are good reasons to think we would be better off without it (there are), then we should turn my Sunshine Protection Act into law.

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Now, some people take issue with my bill because they prefer standard time to DST, and they are under the impression that my bill would mandate the latter. It’s true that the Sunshine Protection Act would make DST the default. If we’re already on it for eight months out of the year, why shouldn’t it be the default?

But it’s not true that my bill would impose DST against people’s wills. In fact, current law allows states to opt out of DST without an act of Congress.

Arizona and Hawaii have already done so.

In the end, it’s clear that fall back and spring forward have outlived their purpose. I hope we can pass the Sunshine Protection Act through both houses of Congress this year − because we could all use a bit more common sense in this country.

Marco Rubio is a Republican senator from Florida.