Brits spend more than two hours a day watching TV and nearly three hours on personal care

Brits watch on average more than two hours of television daily, accounting for most of their time off, and spend nearly three hours on personal care a day, official calculations out today reveal.

According to Office for National Statistics (ONS) analysis, UK families are spending less time in front of the idiot box compared to 2020 when the country was in the teeth of Covid-19 lockdowns.

Back then, the average Brit spent four and half hours on leisure activities, including watching TV.

The country is also sleeping much less than compared to the pandemic years, with the average person in the UK clocking in 8.9 hours of sleep every night. That is down from just over nine hours in 2020, but up slightly from 2022.

There were also signs in the ONS’s research that the end of Covid-19 restrictions has changed people’s working and socialising habits.

Brits in 2023 spend just over an hour a day travelling, most likely due to workers heading into the office more frequently. That compares to around 15 minutes of travelling in 2020 and 52 minutes last year.

Greater time spent commuting to and from work is crimping people’s time for socialising, it seems. Britons took part in an average of 3.7 hours of leisure activities a day, lower than in each of the previous three years.

Daily, this year people spent a little under three hours on personal care, which includes going to the bathroom, dressing, washing and taking medication.