Housework or sleep? Study says it depends when you were born

Even though viewing television was the top leisure activity for both generations, millennial men spent 18 minutes a day less watching TV than their Gen X counterparts. They appear to have shifted that time into playing games. On an average day, more millennials were participating in sports, recreation and exercise than their Gen X peers.

Changes in technology weighed heavily in people’s choices, according to the report. Social media was in its infancy in 2003, smartphones weren’t widespread and Cyber Monday hadn’t yet been invented by retail marketing gurus.

“Millennials have an advantage in that they were able to do a lot of things from the comfort of their home, without getting in their car and going to a store or bank. It saves on time. For Generation X, that wasn’t available when they were their age,” said Michelle Freeman, the senior economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics who wrote the report. “You can’t ignore the technological improvements from 2003 to 2019, and that is definitely a factor.”

Decisions about having children figured in, too.

“Taking care of kids, that was what I was doing the majority of my free time,” said Amy Rottier, who has five children with her husband, Eric, in Madison, Wisconsin. “For me, at that point, leisure time was my husband telling me to take a bath and he would wrangle the kids and put them to bed.”