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Changing Channels
Americans spend the majority of their leisure time on screens, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recent American Time Use Survey.
Out of an average of five hours and 10 minutes of leisure and sports time per day, people ages 15 and older spend an average of about two and a half hours watching TV, and another 37 minutes on activities like video games and social media.
That time spent on TVs, laptops and phones is not surprising, says Lance Garrison, dean for the College of Professional Psychology at the Chicago School and a clinician focused on kids and families.
“I think that the thing that is surprising to me is that screen time isn’t higher,” he says.
Here’s why he and Gloria Mark, a chancellor’s professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine and author of “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity,” believe screens are Americans’ favorite pasttime.
‘With screens, it’s instant gratification’
“TV has always been a huge part of the American culture, at least during my lifetime,” says Garrison. In 2003, for example, Americans 15 and older also spent an average of about 2 and a half hours per day watching TV, according to BLS.
And the medium has become even more enticing, he says, because of today’s myriad on-demand options on streaming services.
It’s also a low-energy activity. Spending time with people takes effort, he says, and the benefits are not felt immediately. “With screens, it’s instant gratification,” he says, adding that “it’s such a low barrier to entry that many people make excessive use of it.”
‘Our whole society is shifting towards spending more time on screens’
Though they don’t mention it explicitly, it’s possible other activities within the leisure and sports category include screen time, too, says Mark.
In the socializing and communicating category, for example, BLS doesn’t specify how or where these activities are happening. They could represent time people spend texting their friends.
Even within the travel category of leisure time, screens are often part of the experience. At some amusement parks, for example, visitors use smartphones to order food. “Our whole society is shifting toward spending more time on screens,” she says.
Other research has found much higher rates of phone use by kids and adults. In 2023, Gallup found that the average U.S. teen spends 4.8 hours per day across various social media platforms.
‘You can read books, you can walk in nature, you can play sports’
While spending time on screens is not inherently bad, for some people, it can turn into a mechanism for avoiding challenges in the real world, says Garrison.
Mark also believes the fast-paced nature of both traditional media and short-form content has negatively affected people’s attention spans, which can affect stress levels as well as quality of performance on an activity.
When you’re trying to figure out what to do in your leisure time, “you can read books, you can walk in nature, you can play sports, you can have conversations with people,” she says. “Those things require us to have longer periods of attention.”
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