How Americans spend their leisure time, 2003 to 2024
Two decades of the American Time Use Survey, by activity. TV and movies still dwarf everything else, while time spent gaming has roughly doubled since 2003.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey
Americans spend most of their free time watching TV and movies, according to the American Time Use Survey by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This activity has dominated leisure time across all recorded years.
The survey spans more than twenty years of data, covering technological developments like the transition from DVDs to streaming services such as Netflix. The format in which we watch hasn't affected the habit at all.
TV is still king
From 2003 to 2024, TV and movie-watching habits stayed consistent, at about 2 and a half hours per day. There were fluctuations, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the amount of time rose to 3 hours and 18 minutes. Since then, it has tapered off and returned to the average length.
ATUS has also quietly updated its examples for the category. In 2024, people weren't setting the VCR or DVD player, rewinding tapes, or borrowing movies from the library like they did in 2003. The setup overhead has all but disappeared.
How Americans spend their leisure time, 2003 to 2024
Population-mean minutes per day, averaged across all Americans 15+ (including those who didn't do the activity that day). TV and movies dwarf everything else.
Annual. 2003 to 2024. Each value is a population-mean: total minutes across all weighted respondents divided by the full population, so non-participants count as zero. Numbers therefore look small compared with BLS tables of “per-day, participants,” which restrict the average to people who did the activity on their diary day. 2020 covers May to December only (ATUS suspended fieldwork mid-March to mid-May; weighting also changed), so that year shows an elevation in nearly every category. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey.
Reading is slipping
Unfortunately, reading is slowly going down, excluding the pandemic spike. Since 2003, it has fallen by 5.1 minutes, almost a quarter drop in two decades. The fact that ATUS counts time spent borrowing and returning books from the library points to even less concrete reading time.
Games and "doing nothing" took over
Both "playing games" and "relaxing and thinking" were ahead of reading in 2024. Doing nothing or playing games was the next best thing after watching TV.
ATUS lists examples such as board games, Scrabble, cards, computer or online games, poker, and bingo.
Relaxing and thinking can also be best summed up as doing nothing or wasting time but may include sitting in the hot tub, sunbathing and even grieving or crying.
Computer leisure, crafts, and everything else
Computer leisure took up around 12 minutes in 2024, more than doubling since 2003. Examples include surfing the web, using social media (and now we know 12 minutes is severely underreported), and even writing computer software for personal use.
At the bottom of the proverbial barrel is "arts and crafts," which Americans spent just over two minutes per day on average, as well as listening to music (whether on the radio or not) and other miscellaneous activities.
For arts and crafts, ATUS records scrapbooking, making decorations, drawing, making videos, and taking photos. Interestingly, creating TikTok videos and recording podcasts also made the cut.
In the graph above, I have tied together several other categories that add up to just over a minute per day. It includes tobacco and drug use, religious television, collecting hobbies (stamps, coins, sports cards), other hobbies that aren't arts and crafts or collecting (gardening, woodworking, model trains and the like), writing for personal interest such as journaling or letter-writing, and a small "not elsewhere classified" residual for anything that didn't fit cleanly into the other categories.
To sum it up
Americans haven't gained much leisure time in twenty years, but they've shifted about five minutes a day from books to screens while watching TV remains the nation's favorite pastime.
A note on the numbers
These figures are population averages, not participant averages. Each value is the total minutes that activity received across all weighted ATUS respondents, divided by the full U.S. civilian population age 15+. People who didn't do the activity on their diary day count as zero in the denominator.