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Title: The last thing Americans do before bed, and more!
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2023
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Abstract: How do most Americans wind down before going to sleep? They watch television. That’s been true since at least the 1970s, when the boob tube overtook the toothpaste tube (and other personal grooming) to become our most common pre-bed activity, according to our analysis of time diaries collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey and, for the longer-run statistics, the American Heritage Time Use Study from IPUMS and the Center for Time Use Research. And the TV screen is still the last thing 2 in 5 of us see before we close our eyes. Personal grooming and washing takes second place: It’s the final activity for about 1 out of 5 of us — and has actually regained ground recently, according to our analysis of the diaries, in which thousands of Americans report everything they did in every minute of a given day, from “fundraising” to “watching billiards” to “tobacco and drug use.” The diaries offer a host of insights into American behavior — including what each person was doing the minute before the sandman entered. After television and grooming, things get complicated. Reading has long held third place, with 6 to 7 percent of us reading ourselves to sleep nightly in any given year. But in 2020 and 2021, reading ran neck and neck with using the computer and/or playing games before bed, a combo that has more than doubled in popularity since 2010.
Url: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/02/24/job-hopping-before-bed/
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Dam, Andrew Van
Publisher: The Washington Post
Data Collections: IPUMS Time Use - AHTUS
Topics: Health
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