Excerpts from WSJ: Aging Americans Sleep More, Work Less, Survey Finds:
- Americans older than 14: 14 minutes less work a day and 10 minutes more sleep than when the survey began a decade earlier.
- Americans’ No. 1 hobby remains watching television. Respondents said they spent an average of two hours, 46 minutes a day watching TV, 11 minutes more than in 2003.
- “The data defies popular expectations…People say they’re too busy for leisure and don’t have time to sleep, but that seems not to be the case.”
- It is difficult to grasp precisely why people have shifted how they spend their days. But demographics and economics play a large role. The U.S. population is aging, with 8,000 people turning 65 each day. Many of those individuals are retired or working part time and thus have more time to sleep, watch television, play shuffleboard and other non-work activities.
- “Essentially, the share of the population who works zero hours per day is growing faster than the employed”
- Most other types of leisure, including reading, socializing in person and taking a second to think, have edged down since 2003. One exception: playing videogames and other “computer use for leisure,” which includes posting pictures on Facebook and mindlessly surfing the Web to kill time. On weekend days, men spend 38 minutes on this activity, 13 minutes more than in 2009.
Read full article here: Aging Americans Sleep More, Work Less, Survey Finds
