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It seems obvious that we have no more leisure time now than before. But consider the huge leisure industries that have grown over the past 100 years. Movies, T

It seems obvious that we have no more leisure time now than before. But consider the huge leisure industries that have grown over the past 100 years. Movies, TV, now streaming services. Radio and now Spotify and podcasts. Video games. Sports and all the media around sports. Even social media is arguably mostly entertainment these days. Or look at active leisure. How many more cyclists and rock climbers are there today vs 100 years ago? Or skiers or runners or hikers? Judging by the shape of the economy, there is a lot more leisure time than before. As a whole, Americans spend a lot less time growing food and making clothes and, well, surviving in general, and a lot more time doing the things above. But Americans also spend a lot more time making the things we fill our leisure time with.

sdeframond 4y ago
> Judging by the shape of the economy, there is a lot more leisure time than before. I'd argue that the size of the leisure economy and the amount of leisure time are only very loosely correlated. For example, if I meditate for 1 hour it is leisure time with no direct economic impact. One the other hand, one could argue that the more leisure time we have, the more we will spend in leisure related equipment, culture etc. However, one might also argue that leisure related spending correlates with disposable income, not leisure time.
bombcar 4y ago
A huge part of it is now everything's outsourced - dual income families are the norm now, and the housework still has to be done. That alone would count for a large amount of lost leisure. You also have commutes going from walking to driving - and the first may feel leisurely but the second rarely does.
mlom 4y ago
it's not leisure if you don't like it. slavery in entertainment is still slavery.
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  Can you expand on the slavery analogy? I'm aware that this is the naive perspective, but when I realized I was watching more TV than I liked, I stopped, and there was no overseer to whip, mutilate, or starve me into resuming. That isn't to say that it's trivial: I had to identify why I was doing it (I don't even like watching TV!), and then work on myself so that I had the mental energy to replace it with activities I find rewarding, like reading in the park or playing music. But this sounds more like "making your leisure time fulfilling is a life skill and a mental health challenge", not "leisure time doesn't exist because we're forced to use it on certain things".
  - scollet 4y ago
    If you have to work to live, you are a slave.
    - wutbrodo 4y ago
      I evidently misinterpreted GP's incoherent comment as claiming that we were enslaved by the entertainment itself, as some commentary about the inescapable addiction of modern media.
      - mlom 4y ago
        no, it means being forced to produce entertainment for others to live is slavery, and a very degrading form of slavery. work on your own fucking reading comprehension.
  - mlom 4y ago
    it's not a fucking analogy, if I don't pay rent I get thrown out on the street, or resort to prostitution (would you call that spending free time in the entertainment biz? fuck you), that's slavery, i'm not fucking worried about watching TV, truly the least of my problems. wake the fuck up
    - wutbrodo 4y ago
em500 4y ago
I think it's broadly true that people have a lot more leisure time that they think. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has surveys on how Americans spend their time[1]. Across the entire population, people spend 3.61 hours per day on Work and work-related activities, vs 5.19 hours per day on Leisure and sports. If that seems a bit off, consider that a lot of people barely work at all (especially those under 25 and over 65), and those that have full time employment usually only work 5 days per week, which lowers the average hours per day considerably. So throughout an entire lifetime, I think it's true that Americans spend a lot more time on leisure and sport than on work. It just doesn't feel that way, especially when you're in prime working age. But even full time employed parents (probably the group that perceives themselves most time starved) still spend 2.95 (mothers) to 3.52 (fathers) hours per day on Leisure and sports[2]. [1] https://www.bls.gov/tus/#tables https://www.bls.gov/tus/#tables [2] https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a6-1317.htm https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a6-1317.htm
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  This is such a useful comment, especially about ages. I would bet a higher percentage of people under 21 today are still in school, vs 100 years ago. School is not leisure time, but comes with leisure time. And on the old end, Social Security and Medicare are probably allowing a higher percentage of people over 65 to enjoy a full retirement, vs 100 years ago.
onesafari 4y ago
It's funny seeing so many people who spend hours every day on social media or Netflix or Steam claim that they have no time. We can see the data on how many hours are being consumed. What explains that?
- gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
  I think part of it is burn out. I have been getting more and more so the past few months. As a result I stopped pursing an AWS cert. The thought of opening my Ancient Greek textbooks brings no joy. As a result I play Skyrim. Saying “I don’t have the time” means “I don’t have the will.”
- mirrorlake 4y ago
  My armchair hypothesis is that using your phone, internet, or TV lacks sensory novelty--you frequently sit in the same place, doing the same thing. It's a repeated stimuli, which causes your brain to filter a lot of it and discard it, leading to the feeling like a night watching TV was a night doing nothing. Your memory of watching TV blends with all memories of you watching TV, especially after a few days have passed. You have to switch up your routine and do something new or otherwise different, and you will retain a memory of that event much more clearly and it will feel like you "did something". My most clear memory of a night in the past week was game night where we played a physical card game. I don't remember any individual night where we watched TV.
  - onesafari 4y ago
    That makes sense and could explain a lot of it. The time spent is essentially compressed in memory making it seem smaller than it is.
- granshaw 4y ago
  In many cases, modern work responsibilities and expectations. Creative/office work is more ambiguous and takes an outsized mental toll compared to physical work. These people need to veg out basically and can only do completely passive leisure activities. There was an NPR “wait wait don’t tell me” episode question a couple of years back that went “most respondents in the survey said they don’t have the energy after work to do _______” what? The answer: “anything”
earth_walker 4y ago
What is leisure anyway? Is it just an easy work/not-work split? I'm not sure it's so easy anymore when so much of our off-work activity is either stress-inducing or basically working for free. Sure, we're not darning socks anymore, but consider this: Is managing one's 'personal brand' on the many social media sites leisure time? If you're doing mundane activities that generates value for a social media company, is it leisure time? For example vetting, posting and re-posting ad copy is basically a low-level marketing job, yet a large percentage of the population say that they spend hours a day doing this. What percentage of our 'leisure time' is spent watching or listening to ads? Is that truly leisure? I guess the argument goes that we choose if and when to do these things - I wonder how much people really feel like they have a choice in the matter anymore.
- mattkrause 4y ago
  Cooking is another good example of how hard it is to separate work and leisure. Everyone needs to eat, so getting/preparing food is work in some sense. There’s a hobby/leisure component too though: you definitely don’t need to spend two hours every day cooking a perfect coq au vin or visiting farm stands to find the tastiest, most interesting produce. On the gripping hand, doing the absolute bare minimum (Soylent or pot noodles or whatever) might be okay for a little while, but many people don’t find it physically or mentally sufficient for the long term either.
draw_down 4y ago

sdeframond 4y ago

> Judging by the shape of the economy, there is a lot more leisure time than before. I'd argue that the size of the leisure economy and the amount of leisure time are only very loosely correlated. For example, if I meditate for 1 hour it is leisure time with no direct economic impact. One the other hand, one could argue that the more leisure time we have, the more we will spend in leisure related equipment, culture etc. However, one might also argue that leisure related spending correlates with disposable income, not leisure time.

bombcar 4y ago

A huge part of it is now everything's outsourced - dual income families are the norm now, and the housework still has to be done. That alone would count for a large amount of lost leisure. You also have commutes going from walking to driving - and the first may feel leisurely but the second rarely does.

mlom 4y ago

it's not leisure if you don't like it. slavery in entertainment is still slavery.

wutbrodo 4y ago
Can you expand on the slavery analogy? I'm aware that this is the naive perspective, but when I realized I was watching more TV than I liked, I stopped, and there was no overseer to whip, mutilate, or starve me into resuming. That isn't to say that it's trivial: I had to identify why I was doing it (I don't even like watching TV!), and then work on myself so that I had the mental energy to replace it with activities I find rewarding, like reading in the park or playing music. But this sounds more like "making your leisure time fulfilling is a life skill and a mental health challenge", not "leisure time doesn't exist because we're forced to use it on certain things".
- scollet 4y ago
  If you have to work to live, you are a slave.
  - wutbrodo 4y ago
    I evidently misinterpreted GP's incoherent comment as claiming that we were enslaved by the entertainment itself, as some commentary about the inescapable addiction of modern media.
    - mlom 4y ago
      no, it means being forced to produce entertainment for others to live is slavery, and a very degrading form of slavery. work on your own fucking reading comprehension.
- mlom 4y ago
  it's not a fucking analogy, if I don't pay rent I get thrown out on the street, or resort to prostitution (would you call that spending free time in the entertainment biz? fuck you), that's slavery, i'm not fucking worried about watching TV, truly the least of my problems. wake the fuck up
  - wutbrodo 4y ago

em500 4y ago

I think it's broadly true that people have a lot more leisure time that they think. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has surveys on how Americans spend their time[1]. Across the entire population, people spend 3.61 hours per day on Work and work-related activities, vs 5.19 hours per day on Leisure and sports. If that seems a bit off, consider that a lot of people barely work at all (especially those under 25 and over 65), and those that have full time employment usually only work 5 days per week, which lowers the average hours per day considerably. So throughout an entire lifetime, I think it's true that Americans spend a lot more time on leisure and sport than on work. It just doesn't feel that way, especially when you're in prime working age. But even full time employed parents (probably the group that perceives themselves most time starved) still spend 2.95 (mothers) to 3.52 (fathers) hours per day on Leisure and sports[2]. [1] https://www.bls.gov/tus/#tables https://www.bls.gov/tus/#tables [2] https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a6-1317.htm https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a6-1317.htm

snowwrestler 4y ago
This is such a useful comment, especially about ages. I would bet a higher percentage of people under 21 today are still in school, vs 100 years ago. School is not leisure time, but comes with leisure time. And on the old end, Social Security and Medicare are probably allowing a higher percentage of people over 65 to enjoy a full retirement, vs 100 years ago.

onesafari 4y ago

It's funny seeing so many people who spend hours every day on social media or Netflix or Steam claim that they have no time. We can see the data on how many hours are being consumed. What explains that?

gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
I think part of it is burn out. I have been getting more and more so the past few months. As a result I stopped pursing an AWS cert. The thought of opening my Ancient Greek textbooks brings no joy. As a result I play Skyrim. Saying “I don’t have the time” means “I don’t have the will.”
mirrorlake 4y ago
My armchair hypothesis is that using your phone, internet, or TV lacks sensory novelty--you frequently sit in the same place, doing the same thing. It's a repeated stimuli, which causes your brain to filter a lot of it and discard it, leading to the feeling like a night watching TV was a night doing nothing. Your memory of watching TV blends with all memories of you watching TV, especially after a few days have passed. You have to switch up your routine and do something new or otherwise different, and you will retain a memory of that event much more clearly and it will feel like you "did something". My most clear memory of a night in the past week was game night where we played a physical card game. I don't remember any individual night where we watched TV.
- onesafari 4y ago
  That makes sense and could explain a lot of it. The time spent is essentially compressed in memory making it seem smaller than it is.
granshaw 4y ago
In many cases, modern work responsibilities and expectations. Creative/office work is more ambiguous and takes an outsized mental toll compared to physical work. These people need to veg out basically and can only do completely passive leisure activities. There was an NPR “wait wait don’t tell me” episode question a couple of years back that went “most respondents in the survey said they don’t have the energy after work to do _______” what? The answer: “anything”

earth_walker 4y ago

What is leisure anyway? Is it just an easy work/not-work split? I'm not sure it's so easy anymore when so much of our off-work activity is either stress-inducing or basically working for free. Sure, we're not darning socks anymore, but consider this: Is managing one's 'personal brand' on the many social media sites leisure time? If you're doing mundane activities that generates value for a social media company, is it leisure time? For example vetting, posting and re-posting ad copy is basically a low-level marketing job, yet a large percentage of the population say that they spend hours a day doing this. What percentage of our 'leisure time' is spent watching or listening to ads? Is that truly leisure? I guess the argument goes that we choose if and when to do these things - I wonder how much people really feel like they have a choice in the matter anymore.

mattkrause 4y ago
Cooking is another good example of how hard it is to separate work and leisure. Everyone needs to eat, so getting/preparing food is work in some sense. There’s a hobby/leisure component too though: you definitely don’t need to spend two hours every day cooking a perfect coq au vin or visiting farm stands to find the tastiest, most interesting produce. On the gripping hand, doing the absolute bare minimum (Soylent or pot noodles or whatever) might be okay for a little while, but many people don’t find it physically or mentally sufficient for the long term either.

draw_down 4y ago