Britons spend almost five times as much time watching television as socialising, government data show.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) data on how adults spend their time reveals the average number of minutes spent on different activities each day, including paid work, personal care, unpaid childcare, entertainment and more.
Apart from sleeping and working, adults spend almost five times as much time watching television as socialising, the figures show.
On average, they spend two hours and 20 minutes watching TV every day, compared to just 31 minutes socialising.
The rest of their time is spent on other activities including preparing and eating food (one hour and 55 minutes), washing, dressing and grooming (55 minutes), and cleaning (27 minutes).
Women do more unpaid work than men
While the figures are similar to last year – two hours and 16 minutes watching television, and 33 minutes socialising – they have changed radically since the pandemic struck in 2020.
The average time socialising is up more than threefold since April that year, when the survey was initially conducted in the middle of the first Covid lockdown. Just eight minutes a day of socialising was recorded then, increasing to a fairly consistent 30 minutes since.
Similarly, the time spent watching TV has also declined, from three hours to two hours and 20 minutes over the same period.
Analysing this year’s data, collected between March 9 and 17, the ONS found that women spent almost one hour (57 minutes) more than men doing unpaid work per day.
Women did this for an average of three hours and 32 minutes, while men spent an average of two hours and 35 minutes. Unpaid work includes activities such as cooking, cleaning, gardening, volunteering and caring for adults and children.
In March 2020, it was estimated that men were doing around three hours 20 minutes of unpaid work, while women have seen their workload fall since then, from four hours.
Ellys Monahan, of the ONS, said: “Today’s findings shed light on the large amount of unpaid work adults in the UK do. Things like unpaid childcare, cleaning, and cooking adds a lot of value to the country but is not counted by standard economic measures such as GDP. These data will help us better understand this contribution.”
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