Americans age 15 and over now average 5.16 hours of leisure and sports time on a typical day, and 2.61 hours of that goes to watching television. Half of all free time, one activity.
Those figures come from the American Time Use Survey 2025 results, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on June 25, 2026, based on interviews with roughly 6,100 people. Set against a body of psychology research on how leisure produces meaning, the numbers describe a country spending its most valuable discretionary hours on the activity least likely to generate a sense of purpose.
