Anyone who doesn’t use ISO 8601 is wrong.

There are plenty of other scenarios with a similar pattern of starting at the larger scale and then the specific.

TV shows: Season 2 Episode 9

Theatre: Act one, scene 3

Biblical: Book of John 3:16

Other books: Chapter 9, page 125.

Address: 123 Main St, Apt #2

Phone numbers: country code (area code) locality-individual

I’m not saying either is right or wrong, but there are precedents for either way.

I’m guessing, but it’s likely because the spoken form for a date is normally, 'May 31st, 2025" vs “The 31st of May, 2025”, hence 05/31/25 v 31/05/25.

I like it. Many agree that YYYY-MM-DD is superior. It also reflects informational entropy. Each additional piece of information narrows down the search space most efficiently.

But in normal conversation, chances are we’re talking about the current year. So it makes sense to skip the year, or save it for last.

Word by word, if someone says the month first, I’m already able to know roughly when this date is. Then the information is hammered out with the day.

If someone says the day first, it barely helps — could literally be in any month of the year. It leaves too much unknown until the next piece of information is received.

Every digital clock displays hours:minutes:seconds. Largest to smallest. I see no reason not to follow the same pattern with the date year/month/day.

This is also how my phone time stamps a photo - year/month/day/hours/minutes/seconds.

This seems very logical to me.

I say June 2nd of 2025

I type 2025-06-02

Handwritten it’s 2-June-2025

I’m from before 2000 and the turn to years being so small broke me, it used to be so clear which number was the year with just 2 digits, and day, month, year is sorting from smallest unit to biggest, it has logic. But then for awhile you could have a 04, an 05, and an 06 and I was working with other countries, it wasn’t at all clear which was year month or day, so I started sandwiching the month in the middle as a word when handwriting dates and using 4 digit year, and year month day sorts like a dream for filenames.

I personally prefer yyyy-mm-dd, as the Japanese do, which also puts month before day. I think it’s because they tend to prioritize history, so that makes sense. Year gives a historical context, month gives the season, while day is kind of arbitrary when talking about historical events. Day will matter most if I’m making short term plans, though, so I certainly see the appeal for day to day life.

Depending on what you’re doing, one will matter more. Precision matters more the more fine tuned the situation.

Think of it like hours vs minutes vs seconds. If I’m just thinking vaguely about the time of day, hour gives me most of the context. If I’m meeting someone or baking cookies, minutes matter a lot more but seconds is a bit too specific. If I’m defusing a bomb? Seconds matter.

As an American I’m not really a fan of it mainly because it’s different from the World standard. We are the only country that insists on doing it different. It would not be hard to change either. I would love for it to change but it’s not something I’m putting a lot of time or thought into right now.

Why do you use 60 seconds in a minute and not an even 100? Why use randomly sized calendar months? Why do you say doce instead of diecidos?

When you speak it, do you say July 3rd or 3rd of July? Both are fine.

I was taught DD/MM/YY and that’s what I use in typed form, but I prefer MM/DD/YYYY, at least in speech e.g. ‘June 13th 2025’. It feels cleaner to narrow by month, then day, otherwise you’re mentally having to wait for context, working backwards. The year is almost irrelevant as it changes so infrequently, about once a year.

ISO 8601 for organising on a computer, as sorting by largest to smallest is the most logical.

In Chinese, its also Month, then day.

Its always “五月 三十一号” (May 31st), never “三十一号 五月” (31st May)

When saying a day in history, the full format is used: 一九六九年 七月二十日 (1969 Year 7th Month 20th Day), but when you use it during every day life to refer to a day in the same year, the year is omitted. If you are referring to the same month, the month also get ommitted.

TLDR: Not unique to “Americans”

Linguistics

In UK English, it’s considered proper to write “the 6th of March” as “6 March” and sometimes read as “6th March” which can be jarring to Americans as their shorthand is “March 6th” and when “6(th) March” is encountered in written form, it’s expanded to the full “6th of March” when spoken

That doesn’t mean this won’t be yet another feature American English absorbs from UK English but right now flipping them in speech requires a few extra syllables and people are lazy

We don’t want or care about it. Its just the way its always been over here. Same with fahrenheit and the imperial system. I know this is a little exaggerated but imagine asking a Japanese person why they dont just speak english because its the worlds most spoken language. Its one of those things other countries like to pick on us for that I think is a little stupid. Instead you should be dunking on us for putting an orange party clown in the whitehouse. Again. But then again there are some exploitative processes that helped make that happen like gerrymandering. My point is that our shit healthcare and the majority of the things that we are laughed at for is out of our hands. Even the fat jokes can be somewhat blamed on the fact that the availabilty of cheap unhealthy food with a large portion size is greater than pricier organic options and lots of the poor tend to take that route. I’m not saying our majority is completely blameless but these are factors to consider.

Edit: following your Edit: thank you for the clarification