Nothing comes for free. And these days, that includes our time.
It's one of many ideas explored in " The Sociology of Free Time ," a University of Toronto course taught by Brent Berry, an associate professor in the department of sociology in the Faculty of Arts & Science.
The course highlights how, in a work-centric society, the combination of long hours, perceived material needs, digital dominance, managed play and more people living alone all take a toll on our free time - and can even make it feel more like work.
"Everybody's interested in ensuring that their free time is abundant, but also of good quality," says Berry, a social demographer. "And ultimately, having the ability to choose how much you have and how you choose to spend it is a powerful form of status."
In the course, students learn how free time has: changed over history (and not necessarily for the better); how it's shaped by class, race and gender considerations; and how the "insatiability of wants" has created a vicious cycle in which we sacrifice our leisure to work toward a seemingly infinite array of goods and experiences.
The course also explores how leisure time is increasingly synonymous with screen time.
"Technology has a lot of promise for interactivity," says Berry. "People are engaging in new ways. They're becoming advocates and getting involved in social movements. But there are a lot of perils, too."
Our lives are now dominated by personal algorithms that confirm biases and reduce our commitment to shared values. "That's why everybody is at each other's throats," Berry adds. "Socialization doesn't operate the way it used to."
Raysha Khan, a fourth-year Woodsworth College student, grew up in a digital world but is uneasy about living in a society where so much free time is spent online.
"I thought this course would be very interesting and have a lot to say about my daily life, because my friends and I are always looking for ways to fill our free time with something other than scrolling on our phones and watching movies," says Khan, who's pursuing a double major in political science and sociology, with a minor in English.
She appreciates how the course traces the history of how one particular type of free time has been disappearing more than any other: the time we share with others.
"Social media might make you feel communicative," Khan says, "but it doesn't build a true connection. It also feels competitive, and can build self-doubt."
Khan's final research project examined the idea of how children in wealthier families are directed toward "skill-building leisure" from an early age, with after-school hours packed full of piano lessons, hockey, gymnastics and tutoring. This fosters competition, she says, because extra skills equip children with greater status than peers from lower-income households. "Teachers in elementary schools engage in conversations more with kids who participate in those activities. So that gives them early social advantages; they're talking to the teachers more, and building up their social capital."
Berry says adults' spare time is dwindling, too. "There's something going on in mass psychology that's affecting the experiential quality of time," he says. "Quiet contemplation, being bored and looking for inspiration: that's simply not as common anymore."
Free time is only appreciated when contrasted with unfree time. For example, Berry notes that people who aren't able to work often feel more stressed rather than relaxed. Yet, one of the things that drew him to the subject of free time was economist John Maynard Keynes' 1930 prediction that the reduction in employment caused by industrialization would be positive because of the abundance of leisure it would create.
"Keynes tried to make people feel comfortable with the dramatic changes that were happening in the economy by promising them a better future - abundant leisure and the end of scarcity."
"[But] we built an economy around not providing for people's needs, but their wants, which can never be satisfied and lead to other forms of scarcity. Keynes was correct in saying that the 'permanent problem' was how to live 'wisely and agreeably and well'. High levels of division and fragmentation in society today are tracible in part to ongoing changes as dramatic as industrialization - an attention economy driven by algorithmic media and online platforms that erode common ground needed for social cohesion."
More recently, some economists have suggested that artificial intelligence will similarly reduce employment while freeing up time. "We're at the precipice of a similar kind of change," says Berry. "But while AI might provide for our material needs, the insatiability of wants is still there. People will always seek something AI can't provide."
