What voters do with their free time
And what a ‘post-work’ world might look like
There’s lots of current discourse about the future of work and how AI might impact the American worker. For me, an important underlying question in this conversation is: “what would people do if they didn’t have to work?”. This is all very new, and I don’t have a good answer.
But one thing I do know is that I would spend absolutely all my time on my hobbies (sewing, reading fiction, various crafts). So, with that in mind (and with the benefit of some spare survey space) I decided to find out what other people were doing with their time to try and get a better picture of what the supposed “post-work world” might look like.
Lots of people have hobbies
78% of likely voters say they have hobbies — and 86% of those with hobbies said they did their hobby once a week or more. Yes, this isn’t a sample of the general population, so these people are disproportionately engaged and active in politics (or they wouldn’t be likely voters), but that number is similar to those found by other research. We didn’t define or restrict what could be categorized as a hobby, so folks were free to consider anything from watching a lot of Bravo to hand knitting socks to be a hobby.
So many different things count as a hobby. We let respondents write whatever they wanted in an open text question, to get maximum information about their interests. Plenty of the responses were short (“reading” was popular), and some were hilarious (“grandson”, and “smoking weed” are favorites).
Categorizing the responses shows that creative hobbies are the most popular overall, followed by gaming and entertainment. Respondents who reported hobbies like watching TV, watching TikTok, and other “passive” hobbies were grouped into “gaming and entertainment”, so it’s not all video games all the time.
Hobbies by gender
Women are far more likely to have creative hobbies than men, including artistic pursuits, drawing, making music, and crafting. Perhaps unsurprisingly, sports and fitness are much more popular among men, particularly young men. Men also dominate the miscellaneous category, with responses including what you might describe as entrepreneurship (actual text: “Getting Money $$ is my hobby”), investing, and buying cryptocurrency.
By age
Older respondents seem to love crafting (especially older women) and the outdoors. Young people are more likely to focus on creative pursuits that don’t require a lot of materials or leaving the house like drawing and music, instead of hiking or sewing. There’s a sharp decline in the incidence of “entertainment” hobbies with older respondents, but this likely reflects a reluctance to call TV a hobby rather than overall less consumption of media.
Reading is the great equalizer across ages, with near equal popularity among each group. The people who enjoy reading (mostly women) seem to enjoy it at every age.
A few favorite responses
Open text response questions always produce some wild results. Here are some standouts:
One guy who said “having as much sex as possible”
Several people who said “smoking weed”
The respondent who said their hobby was “Grandson”
“Playing games on my phone and earning money”
And the similar “Getting Money $$ is my hobby”
And my absolute favorite: the respondent who said they used to work on submarines and now their hobby was … “looking at submarines.” Live your dreams, buddy.
Touching grass
With such a large majority reporting having a hobby, people clearly have activities that occupy them outside of work. It is the quality and nature of those activities that I find concerning for a post-work world. Young people and especially young men are more likely to have hobbies that are isolating and screen-driven.
If these people were suddenly displaced from work (by AI or other forces), they might well spend more time on these activities, and even enjoy them. It’s hard to know how people’s behavior might change in such a world — maybe they’d take after our older respondents and get into crafts or the outdoors.
But if they were to continue as they are now, we would be facing the long-term prospect of a society where everyone spends all their time alone.
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