Tap, tap, slide, linger. Tap, slide, linger. This is the monotonous, almost hypnotic, one-fingered dance of the 21st century leisure class – the leisurarti. According to economists, at least those who are interested in what people do when not occupied with work, we now have a lot more leisure time than we once did. One US study, spanning 1965 to 2005, suggests the rise in leisure equates to an extra five hours per week for men and a less impressive three hours for women. Like income, there are also inequalities in leisure.
Time-use surveys – a commonly used means of measuring how people allocate their time – don’t always agree on what constitutes leisure. For instance, should childcare be included? What about lunch breaks? Contested categorisation aside, all of the major time-use studies concur: leisure has increased dramatically. We are Generation L.
My question though, is what are we doing with all this newfound leisure time?
In the ideal society, as depicted by Thomas More in Utopia, the working day is shortened to just six hours. In 16th century England, when More was writing, a six-hour work day would have been unthinkable for most people.
Utopia’s shortened workday was intended to maximise leisure time, and for the Utopians there was no greater leisure activity than “the improvement of their minds, in which they think the happiness of life consists”.
If we look at the origins of the word leisure, this connection to improving one’s mind persists. The word leisure derives from the Greek skhole which, through the Latin schola, gives us the modern English word school.
Today, many complain that education (school) has become overly focused on simply providing young people with the knowledge and skills to join the workforce.
In Utopia, people worked in order to free up time for school, that is, the improvement of their minds. How much of today’s leisure time is being devoted to the improvement of the mind? Tap, tap, slide, linger.
Sitting in a coffee shop in a mall, I realise that this is where a great deal of our leisure time is now spent. Malls might do well to rebrand themselves as “leisure labyrinths”, places we go to get lost in leisure. Looking around my coffee shop I see people on smartphones, gazing almost lovingly at the screens and performing the ubiquitous one-fingered dance: tap, tap, slide, linger.
Whether this activity is leading to the improvement of the mind is anyone’s guess.
For sure, some people use their phones to read great works of literature, while others engage in deep meaningful, albeit digitally mediated, discussions with friends, family and strangers.
We can’t make “windows into men’s souls”, but we can make windows into their phones. Looking at big data tells us a little about what people are most frequently doing on their smartphones.
We know that the most visited website in the world in 2015 was Google, and we also know that the most Googled term in the UAE in 2015 was “iPhone 6S”. Tap, tap, slide, linger.
As individuals and societies we really need to take a long hard look at leisure.
Some companies (including Amazon) have already toyed with the concept of a four-day week, and if we believe the predictions about the “rise of the robots” and that average life expectancy might reach 150 years, then we can anticipate a lot more leisure time in the near future.
It seems more important than ever to try to recapture some of leisure’s original essence. Leisure as a means of improving the mind, leisure as a time to be still, calm and tranquil, leisure as a time to reconnect with nature and creativity.
For many of us leisure time has increased, and seems likely to increase further.
Whether this leisure time is a gift or a curse will depend upon how we use it.
Dr Justin Thomas is an associate professor at Zayed University
On Twitter: @DrJustinThomas
