Time spent by Indians on leisure, mass media up by 16 minutes: Survey

NSO's latest survey says the time spent on these activities rose to 159 mins a day in 2024

People in India are spending less time on socialising and participation within the community, and more time on leisure and mass media in 2024, shows the latest time use survey (TUS) results released last week. The survey compares figures with the earlier TUS conducted in 2019.

 

Data shows that time spent by people on activities like ‘Socialising and communication, community participation and religious practice’ decreased by 5 minutes in a day to 125 minutes in 2024 compared to 2019.

 

But time spent on ‘Culture, leisure, mass media and sports practices’ rose 16 minutes to 159 minutes during the same period. 

 

The phenomenon has been observed in both urban and rural areas and in males as well as females.  

 

The survey comparison shows that while the time spent on socialising & community participation in a day decreased to 128 minutes in rural areas in 2024 from 132 minutes in 2019, it decreased to 119 minutes from 126 minutes in urban areas.

 

On the other hand, the time spent on leisure and mass media in a day increased to 151 minutes from 135 minutes in rural areas, while it rose to 176 minutes from 162 minutes in urban regions.     

 

The survey includes activities like conversing, chatting, socialising, participating in community celebrations of cultural/historic events, participating in community rites/events/weddings and involvement in civic responsibilities, among others. These fall under the ‘Socialising and communication, community participation and religious practice’ category. 

 

The survey also includes activities like watching television and video, listening to radio and audio devices, sports and exercise, attending/visiting cultural, entertainment and sports events, among others. This is under the ‘Culture, leisure, mass-media and sports practices’ category. 

 

Gender analysis shows that while males cut 10 minutes from their daily routine on socialising & community participation to 124 minutes, women only cut their socialising time by a minute (126 minutes).

 

Whereas, for leisure and use of mass media, males added 23 minutes in their daily routine (169 minutes); females only added 7 minutes (148 minutes) in their routine.     

 

As a share of people participating in socialising & community participation activities in a day, males seem to be more ‘asocial’ than women.

 

The share of men socialising and participating in community events and religious practices declined to 89.8 per cent in 2024 from 91.4 per cent in 2019. The share of women participating in these activities only decreased to 90.7 per cent from 91.3 per cent.

 

The National Statistics Office (NSO) conducted the first country-wide TUS during January-December 2019. The second all-India TUS was conducted after a gap of 4 years during January-December 2024.

 

“India is among the few countries, including Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, the US and China that conduct the national TUS to analyse how people allocate their time to various daily activities. The primary objective of the survey is to measure the participation of men and women in paid and unpaid activities,” the ministry said in a statement.