By December 2001, watching television (including videos and DVDs) had dropped back down to 1960 levels, with only 26% of people saying that watching television was their favorite leisure activity. Twenty-five percent of respondents replied that they enjoyed spending time with family the most. (The poll, however, did not delve into what activities American families enjoyed during time spent together.) Reading came in at 9%, listening to music was at 2%, and only 1% of people replied that they preferred to work on the home computer in 2001.
Hobbies
For years Gallup has also been asking Americans about their favorite hobbies. The 2001 press release by Lydia Saad listed the results for this survey from February 1948 and December 2001. In 1948, 42% of Americans replied that they were not interested in any hobbies. The hobbies that generated the highest response were handiwork, which included everything from knitting to model aviation (15%), athletics and sports (10%), and amateur craftsmanship, including carpentry and photography (6%). By comparison, only 19% of survey respondents in 2001 said they did not have a hobby. A full 33% listed sports. The number of people who engaged in handiwork grew to 17%. Spending time on the computer, which included programming, surfing the Internet, and playing games, was the favorite hobby of 4% of survey respondents.
A September 2002 Gallup poll took a different approach in trying to determine how Americans entertain themselves in their free time. The poll, which appeared in "Does Reading Still Stack Up?" by Jennifer Robison (Gallup Organization, September 3, 2002), asked computer users how much time they spent on a number of activities. (See Figure 10.4.) Once again, television won out. Computer users reported that they watched 2.5 hours of television a day. Using the Internet, however, came in second in this poll, with computer users saying they spent 1.5 hours a day on the Internet. The poll reported that both computer users and noncomputer users spent 1.1 hours reading books on average.
Music and Movie File Sharing
Since the creation of Napster in the late 1990s, file sharing of music, and to a lesser extent movies, has become commonplace in America. (See Chapters 4 and 5.) According to "Downloads Are Music to Teen Ears" by Linda Lyons (Gallup Organization, June 24, 2003), 47% of U.S. teenagers (aged thirteen to seventeen) said they used the Internet for file-sharing purposes. Many of these music files were undoubtedly downloaded from sites and file-sharing networks, such as Kazaa, that were not approved or licensed by the recording industry. When asked if they had downloaded music from an Internet site not authorized by a record company, 18% of adult Internet users responded that they had, according to a spring 2002 Gallup poll. This same survey also revealed that 3% of Internet users had downloaded a movie illegally. If downloading movies could be done quickly and easily, 21% said they would do so.
According to "A New Spin on Music Distribution" by Steve Crabtree (Gallup Organization, July 16, 2002), the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) claimed that music sales around the world dropped 5% in 2001 due to music piracy (i.e., illegal file sharing) and economic downturn. As a response to this loss in profit and infringement of music artists' copyrights, the Recording Industry Association of America began to go after organizations and individuals who were downloading music without the record industry's approval. In 2002 the infringement of copyrighted material could be punished with $250,000 in fines or three years in prison.
Public sentiment on the issue was mixed. A March 2002 Gallup poll showed that 43% of people thought copying songs from a CD onto a computer and then trading songs over the Internet should be legal, and 46% thought the practice should be illegal. Eight out of ten adults polled in May 2002 said that the ability to share music files over the Internet had no affect on their likelihood of buying a CD. A clear majority of adults were against laws that would require electronics manufacturers to make CD players in such a way that music could not be copied. Sixty-three percent opposed such laws in March 2002, and only 32% were in favor. Feelings were again
FIGURE 10.4
mixed when people were asked if record companies should make CDs where songs could only be copied a few times. Forty-eight percent of adults favored this solution, versus the 42% who opposed it.
Teens and Entertainment
Despite the unprecedented variety of entertainment choices available to teenagers in 2003, Figure 10.5 shows that most teens (aged thirteen to seventeen) had adopted the favorite pastime of their parents. When asked in 2004 what they did yesterday for entertainment, 90% of teens said they watched television, according to "Teens' Leisure Habits: TV on Top" by Heather Mason (Gallup Organization, October 26, 2004). Television superseded every other activity by far. Listening to music on the radio and listening to music on CD/MP3 players came in second and third in the poll, with 77% and 76% of teens claiming to have participated in these activities during the previous day. Reading was not at the top of the list. Only 33% of teens had read a book for pleasure. Roughly the same percentage (29%) had read a magazine or newspaper (28%).
As Figure 10.5 reveals, two-thirds of teens used the Internet the day before they were polled in October 2004. In "What Are Teen Webheads Doing Online?" (Gallup Organization, May 6, 2003), Steve Hanway reported that teens' use of the Internet varied markedly. A full quarter (26%) of teenagers with Internet access responding to a January/February 2003 Gallup poll said they went online an hour or less a week. Roughly a third (38%) replied that they went on for one to five hours a week. Most of the remaining teens were on the Internet five hours or more,
FIGURE 10.5
with 7% spending over twenty hours on the Internet. Figure 10.6 displays what teens did online. As with adults, teens' favorite activities were finding information (96%) and sending and receiving e-mail (96%). Chatting with friends over IM came in third, and downloading music was the fourth-most popular activity. A full 73% of those teens who spent more than five hours a week on the Internet reported using the Internet to download music.
Another popular activity listed in Figure 10.5 was playing video games. An August 2003 Gallup poll found that nearly three-quarters of teens (74%) played video games at least one hour a week. Forty percent of the respondents said that they played between one and five hours a week, 12% replied that they played eleven to twenty hours per week, and a whopping 13% reported gaming for twenty-one hours or more. The August 2003 poll appeared in "Grand Theft of Innocence? Teens and Video Games" by Steve Crabtree (Gallup Organization, September 16, 2003). The article points out that many parents and educators were concerned about the violence in video games such as Grand Theft Auto. Grand Theft Auto allows players to roam around a fictitious city committing countless crimes. Not only do such games give teens a false impression of adult life, but studies have shown that the games may hinder social development in some teens. According to Crabtree, a study at Tokyo University in 2001 found that violent games stunt the development
FIGURE 10.6
of the brain's frontal lobe, which is the part of the brain that controls antisocial behavior. Regardless, 60% of teens reported playing games in the Grand Theft Auto series. Only sports games were more popular. Sixty-nine percent of respondents to the August 2003 poll said they had played sports game. Generally, when it came to video games, girls played less than boys. The exception was The Sims series of games. Forty-five percent of girls played games in this series, compared to 43% of boys.
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