7 ms·
Alternative question: how many Americans have enough free time to access the outdoors regularly?
by SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
Alternative question: how many Americans have enough free time to access the outdoors regularly?
- nervousvarun 3y agoEncountered a paywall so apologies if missing some context, but when you say free time do you mean they live far away and need to drive distances to parks? I’m American and I’m outside all the time. Walking the dog, or walking with my family, taking my daughter to the playground. I work full time and have a family but easily have time to walk every day. But maybe “outdoors” here means activities like hiking? If so I think I understand what you mean. That would be something most people could only do on weekends.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoI understood it as hiking and camping, because the articles initial photo seemed to imply this.
- Clubber 3y agoProbably a lot. There's a lot of compelling entertainment today that didn't exist 20 years ago.
- theGnuMe 3y agoSure there’s something for everyone but 20 years ago people sat in front of cable tv ad infinitum.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoAnd 60 years before that dad sat in his chair reading the paper and listening to the radio until bed. Maybe the only thing keeping back the bmi was the dad in this time was smoking like a chimney and grew up slight and malnourished to begin with in the great depression.
- hasbot 3y agoAll of them if they reduced their television and Internet consumption. I think a bigger issue is nature isn't so much accessible to many. They paved paradise and put in a parking lot. I'm house hunting and so many neighborhoods don't have sidewalks or parks.
- hotnfresh 3y agoNature’s boring enough that it’s not really worth the downsides (bugs, travel for most people, humidity/ice/whatever) to go out and “enjoy” it in large stretches of the country. There are cities where the nicest outdoor areas in 200 miles wouldn’t make the top-100 list of outdoor areas in the same radius, for other cities.
- jwells89 3y agoBugs is a big one. I have a hard time enjoying wherever I’m at if there’s a bunch of mosquitos or wasps around for example, even if I’m wearing repellent. I guess that means I should move somewhere that’s frequently snowy if being outdoors often is a goal.
- bobthepanda 3y agoAlaska has pretty gnarly mosquitos.
- WalterBright 3y agoI've been told that Alaska has 4-engine mosquitoes.
- lupusreal 3y agoAlaska is much nicer in the winter, if you don't mind being cold.
- mattpallissard 3y agoWe also have no-see-ums, which I find more irritating personally.
- nohankyou 3y agoThey may have way too much free time, they just choose to spend it passively watching shows instead of being actively engaged in an activity. Indoors vs outdoors probably doesn't matter as much as how they are choosing to spend their free time in the first place. Are they indoors doing home renovations or art projects? Or simply binging the next new show on the couch?
- Spivak 3y agoThis is such a silly take, you're taking a real observation that people need to decompress but moralizing it rather than trying to understand it. While some activities you would call active can fill the need to destress the majority of them are passive. Creative hobbies are serious work until you're good enough at them you can turn your brain off while doing them. I can do it with programming but it's also my career and I've spent my 10,000 hours getting there. So people turn to reading, listening to music, podcasts, taking a bath, watching movies and TV, exercising, video games, or scrolling through their phones.
- nohankyou 3y agoMindlessly consuming content for hours on end is 'silly'. It's easier than doing something worthwhile, sure. Our society wasted a lot of hours doing idle things yet complains we don't have time to be social or get other things done. People aren't lonely, just too lazy to try. Yet they can watch every episode of Below Deck and feel ok with how they have spent their lives...
- kjkjadksj 3y agoThe problem isn’t taking time to decompress. Its that there isn’t any time being spent to be active. Most americans are sedentary and its super unhealthy. The fact we’ve established this lifestyle where people sit all day and feel tired from sitting all day and now have to sit all night to relax is terrible for personal health. As an animal we are meant to walk miles and miles foraging for resources and game. If we gave a dog the modern western lifestyle we’d call that animal abuse.
- 3y ago
- rayiner 3y agoAnnual hours worked in the US is down from 1900 to 1800 since 1970: https://www.jkgeography.com/growth-and-purpose-of-leisure-time.html https://www.jkgeography.com/growth-and-purpose-of-leisure-ti...
- tired-turtle 3y ago3/4 of Americans are overweight or obese, which, I suspect, precludes an appetite for the outdoors.
- iteratethis 3y agoAll of them, as statistics show how they spend hours of their leisure time on TV and their phone.