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.
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.
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].
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.
You also have commutes going from walking to driving - and the first may feel leisurely but the second rarely does.
What explains that?
So what is it? I think these sorts of “idle activities” like TV and games carry with them a burden of guilt that our time could be better spent pursuing a hobby or otherwise learning something which might enrich our lives beyond the mere time we spend doing the activity.
So why do we spend all this time on idleness instead of hobby, sport, music, or other “higher leisure” activities (folk dancing?)? I think, and it’s been argued quite effectively, that work has become all-consuming in our lives even if it hasn’t taken all of our time. For many of us now, work is a mentally rather than physically taxing task. We get home from work (or log off the computer and walk out of the home office) but our minds are still at work. We think about the problems we’re trying to solve outside of work hours. Many of us are also on-call to deal with any crisis affecting the business, even after work hours or on the weekends.
We never get off work! And that’s why we have no time for leisure. Any time we have outside of active work we spend on idle activities like TV or video games so that we can drown out our chattering minds. Pursuing a quiet activity like reading or woodworking is just too difficult if we’re still thinking about work (or worse, worrying about being on-call).
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.
Saying “I don’t have the time” means “I don’t have the will.”
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”
2.) Specifically with Netflix, people watch Netflix while doing other things or when when they are already tired. I turn on tv or listen podcasts when cooking or cleaning or am doing other boring activities. Or when watching small children.
3.) For many people, these are evening activities and activities they use to relax - when they are actually tired. When I watch netflix or turn on game, typically it is in the evening when I am tired. I cant code, I cant read something educational or difficult, my brain is tired.
4.) There are some people who spend a lot of time on Netflix who also say they dont have time. These people pretty often are trying to say polite "no" to whatever you want them. They are trying to reject you without making you feel bad.
You don't think this counts as leisure time? Cooking while listening to music or a podcast is much more enjoyable than doing it in silence.
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.
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".
Of course, I'd work on your emotional stability first. Seriously, man: wild-eyed cursing at internet strangers for imaginary statements they didn't make is the modern equivalent of getting into a screaming match with the voices in your head. I truly wish you all the best.
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.