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As I sat a home mindlessly watching an Animal Planet show about a former biker with a foot-long beard who traded his wild lifestyle to become a caretaker for a retired film star elephant (”Tusks and Tattoos”), I wondered how other people spend their down time.
You work with people, see them on the street, at the bank, at the gym, and you have to wonder, “What are they like in their ‘real’ lives?” As if people aren’t themselves then they are in an environment outside their home.
More and more, people are essentially becoming their work.
A disturbingly interesting survey done by the U.S. Department of Labor gauged how people divided their time; basically, they provided a snapshot of how much Americans ages 25-54 with children work, eat, sleep and even grooms themselves.
The results showed the average person in that age category with kids slept for 7.6 hours a day and was involved with work and work-related activities for 8.7 hours per day. If you do the math, that equals 16.3 hours. Those few waking hours left over are spent eating and drinking (1.1 hours), doing household chores (1.1 hours), caring for others (1.2 hours) and doing leisure or sports activities (2.6 hours).
I think it is a safe bet to assume those leisure activities are more often than not going to involve a TV rather than a racket or treadmill.
Watching TV by far topped the list for girls and boys, followed by socializing. Household activities ranked high for girls; working, volunteering and reading were in the bottom three activities for both sexes.
If you are one of the millions of Americans who watched or will watch “House,” “Dexter,” “Heroes,” “Desperate Housewives” or “Family Guy” this week – the five most-watch shows on TV – you can vouch for how at least a half-hour or hour of your evening is spent once a week.
Robert Whaples of Wake Forest University has reported that in the 1800s, Americans typically worked more than 70 hours per week, and by the 1980s, that number decreased drastically to slightly below 40 hours per week. Those numbers aren’t surprising, considering the enormous decrease in hard manual labor in fields and on farms, the infiltration of technology in everything we do and the drastic change in occupations.
Believe it or not, from 1880 to 1995, the average time the “man of the household” spent sleeping, grooming, eating, doing chores and traveling to and from work was exactly the same, although work averaged 8.5 hours per day in 1880 and 4.7 hours per day in 1995.
Discretionary time – leisure activities, excluding sleeping, eating and hygiene – has been on the rise since the 1880s, and is expected to hit near 322,000 hours per year by 2040.
Nielsen reports that the average American watched more than 151 hours of TV per month, an all-time high, in early 2009. Although watching videos online and on mobile phones and other devices is skyrocketing, TVs still remain the screen of choice.
A U.S. Census Bureau report released in 2006 said, “Adults and teens will spend nearly five months (3,518 hours) next year watching television, surfing the Internet, reading daily newspapers and listening to personal music devices.”
Since that report was completed, technology has changed the way many Americans spend their time, whether it be for listening to music, reading or working. Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites are now more than toys for the Y Generation, and iPods and smartphones (Blackberrys, iPhones) are common place.
According to the Monthly Labor Review, between 2003 and 2007, full-time university and college students ages 15-49 only spent 3.2 hours (did you read that, parents?) on an average weekday doing educational activities, while 3.9 hours were spent doing leisure activities; 1.5 hours were spent traveling; and 3 hours were spent working.
On average, high school students slept for 8.3 hours a day and performed educational activities, such as attending class and doing homework, for 7.5 hours.
The times, they are a-changin’. Really, 9 to 5 is little more than a Dolly Parton movie and sitting down to three square meals a day with mom and dad isn’t often a reality.
To be sure, the down time we do have is more precious than ever, and how people define what makes it worthwhile will continue to evolve.
Katie Johnson is managing editor of the Niles Daily Star, Edwardsburg Argus and Cassopolis Vigilant. She can be reached at (269) 687-7713 or at katie.john son@leaderpub.com.