What do people who are older do with their time? Have you ever wondered what Mom is up to throughout the week? Perhaps you’re beginning to see the need to help your parents and think about what they might do that consumes the most time. Grandpa always seems to have something that he has to work on. Or maybe it is the opposite and you’re worried about them having too much free time on their hands.
The amount of time alone is different between the ages
If people who are 55 or older were married or not, they will spend a significant amount of hours in solitude. When they were out running errands, or watching TV at home, around 10 hours a day was spent by themselves for adults who were not married, and 5.5 hours when they had one or more spouses. Individuals who were not married did spend more time with family members and friends, approximately four hours every day, which is compared to only 2.5 minutes for couples who were married. How does this compare to younger generations?
It’s not a surprise that students (age 18-49) tend to have fewer hours alone. As per the BLS, American Time Use Survey for students, there wasn’t a category for time spent by themselves. This could be due to educational demands. Ironically enough, with such extensive amounts of time on “educational activities”, students are less likely to read than older individuals.
Overall, students spend significantly more time devoted to education traveling, driving, and working than people of a certain age. This explains the virtually zero amount of time young people were alone, and likely is the reason for their lower levels of depression as well.
To work or not to work
Senior Americans a aged 65 and over were also surveyed on their time off. People who worked spent about three hours per day watching TV in their luxury retirement living orange county appartments, whereas their non-employed counterparts watched nearly five hours.
The amount of time spent socializing and interacting with other people, either by telephone or face to face is about the same and under an hour between both groups. They each spent less than an hour in reading. the group with no job did spend a little more time but the biggest difference between unemployed and employed seniors is the amount of time they spent watching television. Both groups spent approximately the same amount of time performing household chores.