Use of Leisure Time

Use of Leisure Time

Most people would agree that Americans are workaholics. Sixty- and seventy-hour workweeks are nearly the norm in this society. College students carry eighteen credit hours plus a part-time job. Therefore, what people choose to do with their precious free time says a lot about them. Knowing the relative amount of time that they spend with their friends or family, shopping, or sitting at home with the TV is a good indication of the entire state of the culture. Even the types of public places people go for recreation are signs of what is important to them.

I have my own theory of what people mostly do with their free time. My theory is similar to what Ray Oldenburg said in The Problem of Place in America. Oldenburg bemoans the loss of public places where people go to socialize. He said, and I agreed, that people mostly live in their houses and never go out. When they do go out, they mostly shop. When they are home, they socialize with those who are home with them: their family (Oldenburg, 1989). Oldenburg focused on suburbs, but I believed that it would also apply to people who lived in other places as well.

I devised a small 5-question survey, which I hoped would summarize people’s behavior on this topic. My survey asked the following questions. (1) What percent of your leisure time do you spend at home? (2) What percent of your leisure time do you spend shopping (not for necessities)? (3) Is there a public place you can go where you are likely to run into someone you know? (4) What percent of your leisure time do you spend socializing with people outside your family? (5) How old are you. For questions 1, 2, and 4 the possible answers were 100 percent, 75 percent, 50 perc...

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... people to see that they and their neighbors are not really so cut off from everyone. If most people are like Mr. Oldenburg, and me then they believe that our society is in a sad state of affairs -- that they are selfish and self-serving and have no interest in socializing with our neighbors. This study, though limited, seems to prove otherwise.

I had set out to show the true nature of how people tend to use their leisure time, and I found it. It was not what I intended to show, but I am not disappointed. If anything, there seems to be a renewed sense of humanity and community among the people who responded to the survey, and how could anyone be disappointed in that?

References

Oldenburg, R. (1989). A forest of voices: Conversations in ecology. In C. Anderson & L. runciman (Eds.), The problem of place in America (pp. 94-109). Mountain View: Mayfield.