Across all the abundant commentary and analysis on the decline in American religiosity over the last few decades, surprisingly little attention has gone to the influence of how people are actually spending their time.
Public discussion has instead centered on a wide range of concerns and controversies often highlighted as presumably driving the dissolution of faith commitment — from increasing political polarization to disagreements over identity, sexuality and gender.
While all of this no doubt plays a role and is worthy of continued attention, some new data on America’s priorities, reflected in how they spend their time, adds another important angle to the discussion — confirming the extent to which time spent on religious activities in Americans’ day-to-day lives is strikingly sparse.
As part of The American Time Use Survey, run by the U.S. government, a cross-section of Americans fill out a record of their previous day — event by event — recording approximately how much time they spent on each event before moving onto the next one. This creates a fairly reliable record on how much time an average American generally spends on various activities down to the minute.
Since 2003, the government has interviewed almost one quarter of a million Americans about their daily time use. Even if the last day they are interviewing about was atypical for any given person, since so many Americans have been interviewed, we can draw some solid conclusions about what the average American’s day looks like.
Many of the numbers are what you would expect. For instance, Americans spend on average nine hours on sleep, and one hour and six minutes on eating (with another half hour on food preparation). They also exercise for about 20 minutes a day.
But some other numbers might surprise you. For instance, the average American spends only 34 minutes a day socializing in some form and only half an hour per day on any kind of caring for and helping household members (children and adults). And they read for personal interest only a quarter of an hour per day.
The average faith numbers are also striking. There are two ways the spiritual dimension is measured: average amount of time spent in formal religious services and time spent in personal religious or spiritual activity on a given day (including things like prayer and scripture study).
On an average day, the U.S. population spent 3.6 minutes in formal, attendance-based religious practices in 2023, which is almost half of the daily 6.6 minutes recorded in 2003. Of course, Americans typically only go to religious services one day a week, with all the non-Sunday days (in the case of Christians) lowering the average.
Yet for the purposes of trends, it’s clear that the American Time Use Survey is picking up Americans’ declining proclivity overall for attending religious services.
What about the percent who are engaged in personal religious or spiritual activity on a given day? That number is trending upward, albeit very slightly. In 2003, the average American spent 1.8 minutes on these activities per day on average, while in 2023 they spent 2.4 minutes.
That increase is very modest, and hardly something to celebrate. But it seems fair to say that to some degree, many Americans are trading worshiping in a service for more personal worship.
But there’s a bigger story that’s also loud and clear: Based on how people choose to spend their time, it does not appear that spiritual and religious practice is a substantial force in most people’s day-to-day lives.
On average, Americans spend nine minutes on pet care a day, about four times as much as they spend on religious and spiritual practices outside of formal worship. They also spend 22 minutes on gaming per day, nine times as much as personal religious and spiritual practices. (Since this survey started in an earlier era, unfortunately there’s no category that “smartphone doom scrolling” fits into neatly.)
Of course, Americans have a lot of demands on their time. Even so, the average American watches TV for more than two and a half hours every day, which is 63 times more time than they spend engaging in spiritual and religious activities. That amount of television is also 10 times more than they spend reading, 8 times more than time spent exercising, and five times more time than time spent on child care and other forms of family care.
Could this time discrepancy alone help explain the decline in religiosity in America today?
Some might argue that all these numbers are simply a reflection of the decline in religiosity, as much as an explanation for it. But that influence almost certainly runs in both directions. If you spent only 2.4 minutes per day on family relationships, or your job, or on physical fitness, how well do you think those areas of your life would flourish?
As the adage goes, whatever you focus your attention on will grow and expand. “The light of the body is the eye,” Jesus famously taught in the Sermon on the Mount. “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”
If Americans aren’t really focused on spiritual or religious matters on a regular basis, should it really surprise us if these same transcendent realities feel, well, less “real” and relevant to our day-to-day lives?
Imagine how much more intense our spiritual and religious lives would be if we prayed, read scriptures and engaged in spiritual practices for at least some of the two and a half hours that we typically spend watching television?
Of course, television has its benefits, and not all Americans watch that much television (again, this is an average), but this data makes it hard to believe when people say they don’t have time to pray, exercise or become educated when there appears to be so much other time to spend elsewhere.
Even increasing our spiritual devotions to match how much time we spend on pets would triple our level of spiritual devotions. And imagine how much more physically vibrant and healthy one would be if they exercised for a portion of those two and a half hours a day instead, or how much more erudite and knowledgeable if they read for more of it.
Ultimately, we suspect that the decline in religion is consistent with the decline in institutions and organized activities in general. For example, during this same time, volunteerism peaked at an average of 9.6 minutes a day in 2007 for the average American, but has declined abruptly to six minutes a day post-COVID. Labor union membership has declined dramatically, as has political participation. The decline in participation and involvement in anything at all, generally speaking, is a headwind that faces not only religion, but organized activities in the U.S. in general.
But this data provides a nice opportunity to revisit our own priorities as reflected not only in generalized commitments — but also in the specific ways we each spend our own time.
After acknowledging the “circumstances beyond our control” we all face in our lives, President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emphasized that “there are many things we can control. We set our own priorities and determine how we use our energy, time, and means.”
He then cautioned that “If most of the information you get comes from social or other media, your ability to hear the whisperings of the Spirit will be diminished” — pleading with listeners repeatedly to be “making time for the Lord in your life — each and every day.”
From the sheer data alone, it’s fair to say that for most people it is not technically difficult to increase the amount of time they make for faith every day — since there is very little spent on God in the first place. But on a practical level, the habits and patterns set in any of our lives can take on a life of their own and carry a momentum that can feel very difficult to resist.
Yet we’re still in the driver’s seat. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to pick up that remote to turn on Netflix tonight. So, maybe you can experiment with changing things up a little?
As all of our lives have become bombarded with outside media, moments of calm, spiritual contemplation may be rare, but are needed more than ever.
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