Television and a lie-in helping households get through lockdown

COMMUTERS are using the time saved through not going to work by indulging in more sleep, television and gardening – and men are doing more of the childcare.

The Office for National Statistics published data yesterday showing how life has changed under lockdown.

On average, each day adults indulge in 18 minutes’ extra sleep, watch almost three hours of television and spend 40 minutes on gardening or DIY. Researchers divided their poll results into a number of categories including sleep and rest; entertainment, socialising and other free time; paid work, and unpaid household work.

They found people had increased the time they spent on entertainment, socialising and other free time by 44 minutes a day. By far the most popular activity in this category was watching television or streaming videos, which took up nearly 3 hours a day.

However, people spent just 28 minutes reading, 26 minutes playing games (including computer games), and 16 minutes phoning or texting friends. Gardening and DIY have increased 147 per cent to 39 minutes a day, and on average we spent an extra 18 minutes sleeping or resting.

There was also a fall in the time spent engaging in activities that, pre-lockdown, would have included going to cafés, pubs, restaurants and getting a haircut. Instead, Britons spent 1 hour and 23 minutes a day eating and drinking, which includes eating takeaway food and drinking alcohol, and just under an hour a day cooking or doing the washing up.

However, the research also revealed not all Britons spent lockdown in the same way with people on low household incomes spending more time on paid work.

Those with monthly household incomes up to £1,700 spent an extra 21 minutes a day on average doing paid work, compared with a drop of around 32 minutes for those on monthly incomes of £1,700 to £3,300.

The ONS said that could be because people on low household incomes were more likely to be in jobs that could not be undertaken from home.

Gueorguie Vassilev, senior research officer at the ONS, said: “These findings show that not all households are experiencing the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic in the same way.

“It will be interesting to see if this reverts to a pre-pandemic pattern after this crisis is over, or if some changes will be lasting ones.”

The data also showed men were doing less unpaid labour than women each day, despite increasing their responsibilities during the lockdown.

Time spent on childcare rose by more than a third, while care from older people, such as grandparents, dropped by 90 per cent.

Men increased their unpaid labour, such as caring for children or adults, housework and volunteering, by 22 minutes to 2 hours and 25 minutes a day, the study found.

However, while women’s burdens fell by 20 minutes a day, to three hours and 32 minutes, they were still giving an hour and seven minutes more of their time than men.

The figures came from a survey compiled to examine life in Britain from March 28 to April 26.

The Time Use survey compared data from that period with figures from a previous study conducted between April 2014 and December 2015.