We used to ask, “What did people do before they had TV?”
Nowadays TV is just one distraction among many.
Prior to all that, before we had electricity, communities would stick together more than
they do now, as person-to-person was their only way to communicate unless they waited
a long time for the mail to arrive.
Much of people’s time was spent trying to preserve food, as well as finding and making
food.
They worked fewer hours only because there was less light.
Kids played outside more, while adults were also more socially active.
Everyone went to bed early as there just wasn’t much you could do in the dark.
There seems to be a lot of criticism pointed at Modern Man and how he lives, but why is
that?
Today we’ll find out, in this episode of the Infographics Show, How will you spend
your life?
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First of all, we should say that there is obviously a huge difference in how people
live around the world.
We can hardly compare the lives of busy New Yorkers to the lives of hill tribes living
on the borders of Burma and Thailand.
The Inuit of Greenland no doubt have a very different lifestyle from the average Parisian,
and while John Smith from West Yorkshire might decry the use of social media and ride his
bicycle three hours a day, Brits do share similar traits.
Today we’ll focus on averages and also focus on mostly the western world.
It’s not that we want to overlook how Zambians live, but to cover the entire world would
be impossible.
Statistics are also more widely available for the West and we think many of our viewers
can better relate to the West.
If you feel left out, please let’s discuss your country in the comments section.
Some things, however, we can all relate to.
One of those things is sleeping.
This is different for everyone, but it seems for years we’ve been told that eight hours
a day is the right amount.
If you do sleep eight hours a day and live to a fairly average age of 75, that would
mean you sleep a third of your life, 25 years, or 9,125 days.
But it’s not as easy as that, as young kids often sleep more than ten hours, teens eight
to ten hours, and adults from 6.5 to 9 hours.
Nonetheless, most sources we can find do confirm we sleep about a third of our life away.
What else takes up the brunt of our time?
Well, for most people that would be work.
Some studies tell us we will spend about 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime.
That’s if you worked from age 21-65 and put in about 40 hours a week.
It’s a good chunk of your life, but many people don’t work, work more, or work fewer
hours.
According to a recent OECD report, the hardest working country is Mexico, followed by Costa
Rica and South Korea.
The report only featured 38 developed and developing nations.
The USA was right in the middle in terms of hours worked, and all the countries that worked
the fewest hours were from Europe.
So, Europeans, you’ll work less of your life it seems.
What else do we all do and do it with a similar frequency to the rest of the world?
Yes, you guessed, we all poop.
As you might have seen from our show on pooping, if the average person lives to 70 and poops
once a day, they’ll spend about 3.5 days on the toilet a year actually letting go.
But that’s just pooping time, not sitting around reading comics.
If we include time in the bathroom, that would be about 92 days in a lifetime.
As for peeing, the average length of urination is 21 seconds, meaning throughout an entire
lifetime, we’ll spend about 43.4 days peeing.
If we add all this up, we could say that we’ll be spending roughly about a third of a year
peeing and pooping over a lifetime if we make it into our 70s.
Another thing all of us do is eat, but how long we spend doing that may depend on where
you come from.
Citizens of France and Italy are renowned for their long dinners, with lots of courses
and often lots of wine, while TV dinners might be more of an American thing.
A study in the U.S. showed that the average American spends about 67 minutes per day eating
and drinking, which for an average lifetime adds up to 32,098 hours or 3.6 years.
That’s a lot of eating time.
According to Statistica, it is indeed the French that spend the most time eating at
about exactly double the time Americans spend eating a day.
So that’s 7.2 years the French spend eating on average.
In fact, out of 38 countries who are part of Convention on the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development agreement, the USA was third from last in terms of how long
eating time lasts per day.
Last was the UK at 59 minutes and then Canada at 61 minutes.
So we can safely say that in many developed nations you’ll be eating between 3.6 and
7.2 years of your life, if you reach an old age.
So, we’ll be sleeping a lot, eating a lot, working a lot, and peeing and pooping a fair
bit, but one other thing most of us will spend a long time doing is driving.
According to a study by the Harvard Health Watch, in America the average person will
drive for 101 minutes a day, but let’s remember this is a country fond of their cars and it’s
also a very large place.
The study states that if you drive from age 17-78 in the States, you’ll spend 37,935
hours behind the wheel.
That’s 4.3 years.
One study we found states that Americans drive quite a lot more than Canadians and Australians,
who also drive a lot, but double or more than the distance that most Europeans drive.
So in many cases, Europeans might only drive a little more than two years of their life.
That said, the same study pointed out that many Western European nations spend a lot
of time on the train, whereas Americans spend very little time on the rails.
The Japanese spend the most time on the train, with Indians coming in not too far behind.
It seems if you are Dutch, there is a good chance you’ll spend a lot of time on your
bicycle.
We also spend a lot of time watching TV.
The Americans come top at 270 minutes a day.
If you lived until 78, but let’s say only 70 of those years you watched that much TV,
in your entire life you’d consume 13 years of television.
The Polish, Japanese, Brazilians and Russians are not far behind.
People from Australia, The Netherlands, Sweden and India watch about half that amount of
TV.
According to Statistica, the average time we spend surfing the Internet throughout the
entire world is 135 minutes a day, which works out nicely as that’s half the time Americans
spend watching TV a day.
We’ll no doubt spend more time online later, but as it stands now the average global citizen
will be actively online close to seven years in a lifetime.
Still, recent reports suggest Thais spend more time actively online than any other country,
at 6.4 hours a day.
That would be 18.6 years over 70 years of surfing.
The Asia-Pacific survey said Thais sleep the least and spend the most time surfing.
Another report we found called the “Digital in 2017 Global Overview” put the Philippines
and Brazil even ahead of Thailand.
Another thing we spend a lot of time doing is cleaning.
Women do it more according to one report, at about 12,896 hours in an average lifetime.
That’s about 1.5 years.
Apparently lazy males spend about half that time cleaning on average.
We should also say that in some countries men hardly clean at all, as it’s still seen
as a woman’s job.
Let’s finish with some nice things.
According to one report we found, the average human will spend about 1,769 days socializing
with friends.
That’s 4.8 years.
What we might call intimate socializing, or just making love, will last on average 117
days in a lifetime.
We could put this in the same category as exercising, which the average human will do
for 180 days of their life.
We should however state that this particular survey only interviewed people from the United
States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Mexico, Russia, Korea and Spain.
So, are you average?
If not, how are you different?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called American Behaviors Considered Rude
Around the World!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!