How Americans spent their time in 2008

[Reed]

The NYTimes has a nifty graph (http://www.nytimes.com//interactive/2009/07/31/business/20080801-metrics-graphic.html?ref=business) on how people spent their time throughout the day.

Computer use is only 1-2%?

Would be interesting to see this graph over a number of years.

[Scrax]

They are asking people to self-report their own usage? I think that throws enough doubt into accurate results. Besides, they didn't include masturbation and that's like, 15% of the average male's day.

[Skipper]

And such a small amount of computer use? What the hell. Masturbation and computers, that's like 60% of the day right there.

[Jakub]

Huh, it's like more people have lunch that breakfast.

[Kael]

They are asking people to self-report their own usage? I think that throws enough doubt into accurate results. Besides, they didn't include masturbation and that's like, 15% of the average male's day.

I think masturbation falls under religious activity.

The fact that volunteering takes up a larger percentage of our time then talking on the phone or computer use seems awfully fishy.

[Scrax]

And what do you do if you combine two activities? Such as eating and masturbation? How about work and masturbation? Come on, so many holes in can poked in this.

[Murph]

Religious activities are almost zero? Gotta admit, that surprises me a little bit.

I'm pretty sure that masturbation is "household activities." Or perhaps "personal care."

It does correlate nicely with movies...

[Jojo]

I think masturbation falls under religious activity.

The fact that volunteering takes up a larger percentage of our time then talking on the phone or computer use seems awfully fishy.


And what do you do if you combine two activities? Such as eating and masturbation? How about work and masturbation? Come on, so many holes in can poked in this.
Volunteering and masturbation?

[TheTrunkDr]

The NYTimes has a nifty graph (http://www.nytimes.com//interactive/2009/07/31/business/20080801-metrics-graphic.html?ref=business) on how people spent their time throughout the day.

Computer use is only 1-2%?

Would be interesting to see this graph over a number of years.
Considering they have a "work" section this is clearly recreational computer use and that number doesn't surprise me that much in that regard.

Edit: "other leisure" includes computer games.

[Hans Lauring]

Volunteering and masturbation?

All my masturbation is voluntary.

[Hanacker]

The percent time spent working for blacks is noticeably lower than whites and hispanics. Go, go, stereotypes!

[TheTrunkDr]

The percent time spent working for blacks is noticeably lower than whites and hispanics. Go, go, stereotypes!
You realize unemployment is also higher for those groups.

[ElGuapo]

So if I'm at work but replying to a thread on QT3, does that count as work or recreational computer?

[robsam]

So if I'm at work but replying to a thread on QT3, does that count as work or recreational computer?
Depends on if you are masturbating.

[Anaxagoras]

The unemployed spend 1% of their time working.

Shouldn't that be 0%?

Unless... maybe a few people consider masturbation to be work?

[WildElf]

Religious activities are almost zero? Gotta admit, that surprises me a little bit.

Well, it's 2% between 10am and noon, prime church hours. And since this is an average day, if you condensed that into one day a week, that's about 14%. Which, if you click on the bar they say that about 13% of Americans are doing religious activities on Sunday at 11am. What's really interesting is that religious activity increases as education increases. So apparently if you have a low education you are more likely to believe in Creationism but less likely to go to practice a religion.

[Anders Hallin]

Probably because you have less time to spend on frivolous activities.

[JZigish]

Religious activities are almost zero? Gotta admit, that surprises me a little bit.

I'm pretty sure that masturbation is "household activities." Or perhaps "personal care."

It does correlate nicely with movies...

The Personal care details specify it explicitly includes having sex, an average of 52 seconds a day.

[Murph]

The Personal care details specify it explicitly includes having sex, an average of 52 seconds a day.

That's a statistic I'm pocketing for later.

[MatthewF]

I worked 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. Let's assume that I was in front of the computer for 8 of those hours. Then I'd go home and sometimes browse the web, watch stuff on my HTPC, maybe spend some time in OpenOffice doing some hobby game design, so we'll add another 3 hours to that. But since that wasn't always the norm, I'll average it to 2 hours, so a total of 10 hours a day per 5 days. Weekends I'd probably only use the computer 4 hours a day or so.

Since there are 52 weeks in the year and I did work weekends a couple of times, but on the other hand there were also holidays, I think that evens it out. So let's assume 104x4, or 416 hours on weekends during 2008. Then we'll assume 261x8 (work days), so 2088 hours. 2088+416 = 2504. Now I also sleep, and you can't count that towards time you would otherwise spend on the computer, or doing other things. I sleep an average of 7 hours a day. Assuming 365x24 hours, that's 8760 hours in the year. Adjusting for sleep, 365x17, or 6205 hours per year when I have time to spend. So 2504/6205 = ~0.403, so 0.4x100 = 40% of my time in 2008 was spent on a computer.

Wow.

[Tim James]

I'll need to see The Onion's take on this statshot.

[LesJarvis]

I'll need to see The Onion's take on this statshot.

They're way ahead of you (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/report_90_of_waking_hours_spent) (albeit not with a statshot).

[Tim James]

They're way ahead of you (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/report_90_of_waking_hours_spent) (albeit not with a statshot).
Sadly looks to be in reference to September 11th, but here's another one: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/36778

[wisefool]

18-24 female phone use looks suspiciously low.