Home-based digital leisure: Doing the same leisure activities, but digital

Abstract

The introduction of the information and communication technologies in the home has transformed free-time leisure activities. Adopting a constructivist and interpretive perspective, we analysed 30 individual narratives in order to describe how digital technologies have transformed home-based leisure activities. The findings show that the changes brought about are qualitatively different from those produced by previous technological devices. The digital technologies have not only increased exposure to different experiences, they also allow people to control those experiences. The consumption of experiences is no longer homogeneous among household members and individuals now have greater freedom regarding their choice of home-based leisure activities. The findings of this study, suggest that digital leisure has transformed home-based leisure, can be used to understand home-based leisure technologies. Further studies are required to explore home-based digital leisure in other areas of people’s lives as digital technologies, devices and applications evolve.

Keywords:

• leisure
• digital leisure
• home leisure
• leisure satisfaction
• sociology of leisure

Public Interest Statement

Internet and digital technologies came to stay at people’s homes, with effects in all spheres of their lives. Computers, video game consoles, tablets, smartphones and other devices were domesticated and adapted to everyday routines, changing some dynamics at home. One of those changes is the use of Internet and the digital devices for leisure and entertainment activities. Now digital technologies replace traditional or common technologies as TV’s or radios, transforming leisure experiences at home. This article explains how a group of 30 people in Barcelona – Spain, live that transformations, shows how they use digital technologies to expand their possibilities of leisure at home and describe the satisfactions, values and benefits they find in the activities that are called as digital leisure in this document.

1. Introduction

The intersection between the digital technologies, leisure and the household is of growing interest to researchers. Studies have been conducted on technologies at home and into how media equipment has transformed the living room (Livingstone, 2007), with the passive role generally attributed to the audience and the active role generally assigned to the communication media (Dolfsma, 2004b). The influence on households’ members has nonetheless been mixed: first cultural experiences were homogenized, then they were differentiated through increased autonomy of choice, especially for younger members (Flichy, 1995; Bovill & Livingstone, 2001; Livingstone, 2007).

The relationship between leisure and family functioning, in particular, has demonstrated that the goal of leisure activities is to improve family functioning, with parents renouncing other activities that would give them greater satisfaction (Shaw & Dawson, 2001, 2003). This research line has shown that family leisure would appear to be an instrument for achieving family goals, but has also revealed that the trade-off between personal desires and family functioning provides uneven benefits to family members in relation to leisure (Larson, Gillman, & Richards, 1997; Zabriskie & McCormick, 2003). According to our informants, the capacity for choice varies among household members and so too did the satisfaction obtained.

Nowadays, Internet-connected devices based on digital media technologies enable individuals to develop what we can call digital leisure activities. Home-based digital leisure means that it is now possible to choose which technologies to use, decide which leisure activities to undertake and choose the person(s) with whom to share the activity (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2001; Anderson et al., 2002; Carr ,Schott, Burn, & Buckingham, 2004; Kraut et al., 2002). These possibilities represent a qualitatively different transformation from that produced by the proliferation of media equipment. On the one hand digital technologies enable that people living in the same household have different leisure experiences, living that way a different cultural experience, as interviewees tells about watching films in the same home but privately in their rooms or by using headphones. This transformation suggests the need to study in detail the intersection formed by the new digital technologies and leisure activities conducted at home.

In this research we describe how digital technologies are transforming the home-based leisure activities of a set of informants based in Barcelona, Spain, how technologies complement leisure activities, how decision-making varies according to household members, and, what the implications are for the satisfaction obtained from home-based leisure activities. Below we discuss the conceptual framework in which our research is inserted, describe our methodology and results, and conclude with a discussion of the contribution of this research and a description of the limitations and possible future research lines.

2. Literature review

2.1. Technologies in the home

Technologies have transformed the home. Their influence on home-based leisure activities, in particular, depends on the nature of the technologies, most specifically on the way the technology interacts with individuals and social groups at home (Lally, 2002).

When radio first came into the home, the family gathered around it and usually one householder in particular controlled which broadcasts were listened to, thereby homogenizing the experience. The spread of portable radios, which freed young people to choose which programs they would listen to without supervision, reduced the homogeneity of the experience (Dolfsma, 2004a). Television sets reunited household members again, this time with audiovisual experiences and exercising a homogenizing influence. Smaller television sets gradually made their appearance in individual bedrooms, once more marking differences in leisure experiences. People shared the same roof but had different experiences while using different devices, a phenomenon referred to as people “living together separately” (Flichy, 1995) and being “alone together” (Turkle, 2011). Audiovisual productions now not only compete for leisure time but also for the attention of each individual family member (Bovill & Livingstone, 2001).

Several researchers have proposed that digital technologies have not only changed our lives (Lally, 2002) and enhanced leisure opportunities (Gershuny, 2003); they have also changed the way leisure is consumed (López Sintas, Rojas de Francisco, & García Álvarez, 2015). For instance, evidence shows that the support used to read the news and the way news is read have both changed (Boczkowski, 2010). Newspapers were traditionally read on paper at home first thing in the morning, late in the evening or at weekends during free time; nowadays news is being read in short bursts throughout the day in the workplace, rather than intensively at home during leisure.

The Internet and Internet-based media make it possible for individuals to also interact with others as social leisure using digital technologies that allows household members to connect, to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances and to meet other people (Rojas de Francisco, López-Sintas, & García-Álvarez, 2016). Furthermore, we increasingly use smart phones to communicate with friends (messaging, emailing and social networking). Hence, the way we share experiences, synchronize our schedules, organize our lives, communicate, coordinate leisure time, and interact socially have all changed (Allen, 2010; Anderson et al., 2002; Jupp & Bentley, 2001; Kennedy & Wellman, 2007; Lally, 2002; Turkle, 2011; Viñals-Blanco, 2015). The proliferation of technological devices at home has changed the way we relate to each other. The Internet enables people to stay connected despite physical distances, as reported by Venkatraman (2012), who analysed the use made of digital technologies by the wives of soldiers deployed far away from the family home. Even physically closer members of Silicon Valley families in California (USA) use digital technologies to keep family members in touch despite daily absences (English-Lueck, 1998).

2.2. Home leisure

Studies of home leisure have described interactions between home members, their functioning, internal cohesion, and ability to adapt to change. The results reported by Zabriskie and McCormick (2001) for core (ordinary) and balance (extraordinary) leisure activities show that core activities are positively related to cohesion between household members, whereas both core and balance activities are linked to their ability to adapt to change.

While it has been shown that family leisure activities positively influence the functioning of the family, the satisfaction of different members of the family varies, depending on the context where the activity takes place and the person(s) it is shared with. Fathers report a higher level of satisfaction when they perform leisure activities at home, whereas mothers and children get more satisfaction from activities performed outside the home. Children, moreover, unlike mothers, prefer leisure activities with friends (Larson et al., 1997; Zabriskie & McCormick, 2003). Research studies also report that parents choose activities to improve family functioning and to transmit healthy lifestyles and moral values, using leisure as an instrument (Shaw & Dawson, 2001). This kind of leisure, however, according to Shaw and Dawson (2001, 2003), leaves parents dissatisfied with the quality of leisure activities and the fragmented time spent on them with their offspring, despite their strong desire to undertake them (Beck & Arnold, 2009). In addition, households differ in how they interpret leisure activities; Churchill, Clark, Prochaska-Cue, Creswell, and Ontai-Grzebik (2007), who linked core and balance leisure activities with the satisfaction obtained by household members, suggests that households can be classified in terms of members for whom all leisure activities are an opportunity to have fun, and those for whom only balance activities offer that opportunity.

2.3. Digital leisure at home

While the actual use of the digital technologies in the home has attracted the interest of researchers, relatively little attention has been paid to the relationship between digital technologies and home-based leisure activities.

Leisure studies suggest that household members differ in their interpretation of leisure (Churchill et al., 2007), and also that the choice of leisure activities improves family functioning and communications (Shaw & Dawson, 2001; Zabriskie & McCormick, 2001) or when serious leisure is performed has healthy results (DeSmet et al., 2014). However, these studies also report an imbalance in the benefits and the satisfaction obtained by different members, demonstrated to be reduced for teenagers (Buswell, Zabriskie, Lundberg, & Hawkins, 2012; Larson et al., 1997; Shaw & Dawson, 2003; Zabriskie & McCormick, 2003) and for women (Green & Adam, 1998; Kennedy & Wellman, 2007; Martinson, Schwartz, & Vaughan, 2002).

The evidence reported in leisure studies has also suggested that digital technologies have altered leisure activities performed at home, and may also have changed the interactions between household members, extended family and friends, changing not only what the households understand by core and balance activities, but also the constraints of space and time that affect these activities. For instance, leisure activities that previously required money and physical displacement can now be performed temporarily, regularly and virtually within the home, and also with persons not present in the home: partial examples are video conferencing with friends (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2001; Anderson et al., 2002) and gaming with friends through Internet-connected video consoles (Carr et al., 2004; Schroeder, 2006). This not only increases the heterogeneity of experiences, but also the satisfaction gained from leisure activities.

Research into digital leisure has typically focused on certain social groups, such as youth (Colwell, Grady, & Rhaiti, 1995; Cox, Clough, & Marlow, 2008) and adults (Anderson & Tracey, 2001; Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008; Mesch, 2006). Digital leisure research has also explored gender differences (Helsper, 2010; Martinson et al., 2002; Richardson, 2009), technology differences (Campbell & Kwak, 2010; Leung, 2001; Prensky, 2001; Schroeder, 2010; Stald, 2008), and specific leisure activities (Anderson, 2008; Gershuny, 2003). Also digitised “leisure” practices are discussed in its geographical, familial, spatial, religious, socio-economic and cultural dimensions (Silk, Millington, Rich, & Bush, 2016). However less attention has been paid, nonetheless, to the changes occurring in leisure activities performed at home from a holistic framework. We attempt to fill this gap by studying free-time leisure activities undertaken in the home—especially those involving digital technologies—in order to understand how traditional leisure (without digital technologies) and digital leisure activities are being transformed, and what satisfactions are obtained.

3. Methodology

3.1. Research aim

Our objective was to describe and interpret digital leisure in activities as undertaken by the informants during their free time at home—using technologies such as computers, tablets, smartphones, video consoles and smartphones—so as to identify changes to home-based leisure activities and assess the satisfaction obtained from these activities performed with digital technologies.

3.2. Epistemology and theoretical framework

To describe and understand the patterns of digital leisure activities conducted at home, this research is framed in the interpretative/constructivist paradigm (Guba & Lincoln, 1994) that asserts that human beings construct meanings from activities as they interact with other individuals and objects, and that out of this process they make sense of their activities. Narratives are treated as strange texts to be interpreted, presupposing an affinity between the set of texts and the reader, making possible the interpretation of texts that are unrelated to the interpreter. The interpretation, therefore, makes it possible to share and communicate meanings among people, and to place them within history and culture. According to the interpretive tradition, the purpose of making sense of a set of texts is to gain an understanding beyond the interviewees’ own interpretations (Crotty, 1998; Rundell, 1995; Schwandt, 1994).

3.3. Sampling criteria and data collection

We used selective sampling at an ICT training centre, asking whether during the last year they had used digital technologies to perform activities for leisure purposes at home, to identify first informants, and followed up with snowball sampling, to access additional informants. Maximum variation sampling was used to capture and describe shared dimensions in digital activities and to cut across informants with varying profiles in terms of sex, education, living circumstances and occupation, theoretical sampling was used to guide the selection of further informants (Patton, 2002). Sampling stopped when additional informants did not add any further analytical category to those described in the findings section (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The initial process sampling lasted 6 months, the visits to their homes were made for longer, to corroborate data that were emerging.

The interviews were conducted at homes in the province of Barcelona using a protocol of 20 topics designed to help individuals produce a top-centred narrative (Riessman, 2002, p. 231) and to foster theoretical sensitivity (Strauss & Corbin, 1994). The semi-structured interviews provided the necessary narratives regarding leisure activities undertaken at home, lasted an average of 60 min, were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. Informants were guaranteed confidentiality, and informed of the aims of the research and the right to interrupt if they wished. Interview protocol will be available at request (Protocol is available at request) (Table 1).

Table 1. Interview protocol

1.	Are you a user of digital technologies (devices and Internet access)?
	What digital devices do you have at home? What do you use them for?
2.	If you decide to stay at home to use your leisure time, why do you do so?
	Imagine a day with free time to stay at home. How do you spend it? What do you do? How do you organize each activity and why? What activities do you generally do?
3.	Of the possible activities, do you realize some related to technologies and digital spaces? Please explain what you do
4.	Why do you choose to perform digital leisure activities instead of others?
5.	What kind of activities associated with digital leisure do you do? What do you like about technologies for leisure?
6.	Could you tell me, how you distinguish between work and leisure when you engage in the digital activities you describe?
7.	What time can you spend on them [leisure activities] and when you do them?
8.	How do you think you started to engage in digital leisure activities? How long ago?
9.	Describe the part of the house you use to engage in digital leisure activities (shared space or private space)
10.	14. Apart from you, does any other member of the household engage in digital activities in their leisure time? Do you share any aspect? Or any activity?
11.	Could you describe what you feel when you use digital technologies for leisure?
12.	Describe what you get from digital leisure activities that you do not get from other activities. Why?
13.	Since you get engaged whit digital leisure activities, has anything changed in your way of doing or use them?
14.	Has the fact that you engage in digital leisure changed your way of life?
15.	Have you had any problem that affected you? (e.g. in your routines, relationships, health. work
16.	If you have children. Do you give your children access to these digital devices for their leisure time?
17.	Are there any rules in your home regarding the timing and use of digital devices for leisure activities?
18.	How and where do you usually acquire the digital devices you use? When you acquire them, how much do you spend, and why?
19.	What features would your ideal digital product have? Having in account also leisure purposes
20.	Do you have any other comments to add?

The sample consisted of 30 informants who answered the call to participate in the study, 15 women and 15 men, with postgraduate, undergraduate and developing secondary education, with occupational profiles as follows: 17 people were in full-time paid work; 10 people were students or combined studies with part-time paid work; two women performed unpaid work at home; and one man was unemployed and looking for a job. Respondents were aged 17–58 years old, sample was not distributed evenly by age because the use of digital technologies was unevenly distributed, as confirmed by Internet Data Analysis reports on the information society in Spain, in which sociodemographic profiles showed that the highest percentage of Internet users are persons aged between 16 and 24 years old and nearly 60% of users were under 35 years (ONTSI, 2013) (Table 2).

Table 2. Interviewees profiles

Name	Sex	Age	Marital status	Household member status	Education	Occupation	Nationality/origin	Place of housing
Adela	F	23	Single	Living with family members	Postgraduate	Documentary maker	Spanish–Andalucía	Sabadell
Adriana	F	17	Single	Living with family members	Vocational	Student/data entry clerk	Spanish–Catalonia	Barcelona/Sarriá
Albert	M	30	Single	Lives with siblings	Postgraduate	Clerk/student	Spanish–Catalonia	San Cougat
Alex	M	35	Single	Lives with roommates	Postgraduate	Doctoral student	Mexican	Barcelona downtown
Andrés	M	18	Single	Lives with parents	Vocational	Warehouse worker	Spanish–Valencia	Barcelona/SantAndreu
Antonio	M	22	Single	Lives with parents	Graduate	Student/blogger	Spanish–Catalonia	Barcelona/Sants
Camilo	M	23	Single	Lives with parents	Graduate	Student	Spanish- Andalucía	Sabadell
Carles	M	29	Common-law partnership	Lives with girlfriend	Vocational	Freelancer	Spanish–Catalonia	Cerdanyola del Vallés
Carmen	F	22	Single	Lives with roommates	Postgraduate student	Public relations	Spanish–Galicia	L’Hospitalet
Clara	F	27	Married	Lives with husband	Graduate	Accountant	Spanish–Andalucía	Sant Pol del Mar
Daniel	M	42	Married	Lives with family members	Vocational	Unemployed	Spanish–Catalonia	Barcelona/Nou Barris
Eli	F	19	Single	Lives with parents	Vocational	Student	Spanish–Catalonia	Castelldefels
Felipe	M	36	Single	Living alone	Graduate	Systems engineer	Spanish–Castilla-La Mancha	L’Hospitalet
Goyo	M	32	Single	Lives with mother and a roommate	Vocational	Disc jockey/bookshop assistant	Chilean/Spanish	Barcelona/Gracia
Isa	F	58	Divorced	Lives with family members	Vocational	Caregiver	Spanish–Madrid	Barcelona/Nou Barris
Jaime	M	34	Single	Lives with a roommate	Graduate	Telecommunications engineer	Spanish–Andalucía	Terrassa
Javier	F	23	Single	Lives with girlfriend	Postgraduate	Sports journalist	Spanish–Aragon	Barcelona/Arc de Triomf
Juan	M	29	Single	Living alone	Graduate	Audiovisual technician	Spanish–Catalonia	Barcelona/Sagrada Familia
Juliana	F	26	Single	Lives with roommates	Postgraduate	Marketing agency employee	Chilean	Barcelona downtown
Manuel	M	29	Married	Lives with wife	Postgraduate	Analyst	Brazilian/Portuguese	Rubí
Marcos	M	23	Single	Lives with friends	Graduate	Student	Spanish–Catalonia	Manresa
Maria	F	37	Common-law partnership	Lives with partner	Postgraduate	Trainer	Mexican/Spanish	Barcelona/Gracia
Mariana	F	23	Single	Lives with parents	Graduate	Community manager	Spanish–Catalonia	Cerdanyola del Vallés
Martina	F	26	Single	Lives with roommates	Postgraduate	Designer and student	Honduran/Portuguese	L’Hospitalet
Miquel	M	29	Single	Lives with roommates	Graduate	Student	Spanish–Catalonia	Barcelona/Poble Nou
Samuel	M	33	Divorced	Lives alone and with son on weekends	Graduate	Industrial robot engineer	Spanish–Catalonia	Terrassa
Sandra	F	24	Single	Lives with family members	Postgraduate	School trips coordinator	Spanish–Catalonia	Sabadell
Sara	F	21	Single	Lives with family members	Graduate	Student	Spanish–Catalonia	Sant Cugat
Sonia	F	27	Married	Lives with family members	Secondary	Homemaker	Spanish–Andalucía	Barcelona/Pedralbes
Teresa	F	46	Divorced	Lives with daughter and roommate	Vocational	School monitor	Spanish–Catalonia	Barcelona/Nou Barris

3.4. Analysis

This was conducted under the narrative analysis framework, which refers to a group of approaches that have in common a personal narrative (Riessman, 1993). How it is defined differs among disciplines. The sociology definition, in particular, refers to extended accounts of live experience in context, narrated during a single or multiple interviews. All the methods, nonetheless, involve the construction and interpretation of texts. In this research, we applied thematic analysis, focusing on self-reported information on how informants used digital technologies at home for leisure. During the analysis we created thematic categories and properties related to segments of text and then explored how themes and categories were distributed among interviewees, finding elements shared across participant’s narratives.

The qualitative analysis was assisted by computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS), designed to aid in conducting collaborative analyses, EdEt editor for ethnographers (Kaliszewska, 2009), and Cassandre’s environment (Lejeune, 2011). We inductively constructed a simple set of themes in order to group narratives according to the activities performed, the technologies used, the places, the times and the people with whom the activities were performed, the transformations of leisure activities and individuals’ satisfaction. During this process, in order to improve the trustworthiness of the categories, the researchers held several meetings to share and discuss interpretations of texts, codes, and categories and their properties (Polkinghorne, 2007). Validation of the categories began by asking the participant’s point of view and experience using control questions to ensure consistency and accuracy and by reviewing the transcripts prior to their coding in several meetings.

4. Findings

4.1. The transformation of home-based leisure

Below we describe how individuals use available digital technologies for home-based leisure activities Choosing from among the narratives of the participants, those that show how traditional leisure activities are changing, how domestic leisure, and individual and household maintenance activities overlap, and how the appeal of traditional leisure activities has changed since digital leisure activities came to be performed in the home.

4.2. Replacement of traditional activities

Most of the informants reported frequently replacing leisure based on more traditional technologies with digital leisure, and changing the way in which leisure activities were developed at home. Juan, aged 29 years, explains how he has replaced traditional technologies for listening to music and watching audio-visual material: “Through Spotify I listen to lots of music, I use YouTube for video. Television series or pirated movies from [source].” Carmen, a 24-year-old postgraduate student in public relations, explained how television for her is becoming redundant: “I use the Internet increasingly more to view series online. Each day I watch less and less television, and spend a little more time on the computer, watching series online.” This substitution shows a change in Carmen’s decision-making regarding televised series, as she now decides which series to see (when available on the Internet) and when, and in what order, to watch episodes. Maria, a 37-year-old audio-visual communications graduate and an instructor in a teaching NGO, uses the Internet to read and watch the news. Television only predominates when it comes to viewing live events such as sports, or the weekend news. She explains:

For example, if there’s news, or I want to see something in particular, I log on, I watch an online series or specific episodes. Or, on a day when I’m bored but don’t want to see a full movie, I watch an episode of a sitcom that someone recommended or that I’ve already seen. But television – next to nothing, very little, at home football games or the news at the weekend and maybe a movie connected to TV.

How the news is consumed seems to have changed not only in terms of the support (now digital, previously analogue), but also in the way individuals of the sample read, listen to, or watch the news. Informants describe how they have become less intense readers; rather than reading the newspaper from cover to cover once a day, they now read in bursts throughout the day. As Sandra tells us: “I might spend 10 min reading online media, but, you know, I check three or four times a day, so that’s 30 or 40 min daily keeping up”. Sources of information have also broadened. Thus, newspapers with reports and articles by professional journalists are not the only, or even the main, source of news, as people visit blogs, newsgroups, and other sites where amateurs write what they want to share with others. Javier, a 23-year-old sports journalist, had the following to say:

People publish links to video-editing pages, new websites on … music, things about the SGAE [General Society of Authors and Editors of Spain]. I use these [websites] more as a source of information, following their news feeds. I open it up … go to the aggregator and see the most cited page feeds – I have them organized by category – and check out a few, those I need to see or until I decide to stop.

I really like forums because, generally, on the Internet that’s where there is most interaction, I don’t like to participate in the forums, but yes, I use them … the forums are easy to check out to see what’s interesting for me. In many cases I use them to locate information or ask questions.

Different sources of information seem to complement each other; hence, reading a story in the newspaper may trigger a search, as 24-year-old Sandra informed us: “I start by reading the newspapers, then I go look up things, because I see an article and there’s something interesting, maybe a conference on something, I see it in the news and then go to Google, see if I might be interested.”

Interviewees described how digital leisure activities combined, interleaved, or overlapped with other daily activities. As examples we refer to Felipe, a 36-year-old engineer, told us that: “Weekdays I might spend an hour watching a movie while eating dinner” and Carles, 29 years old and taking a vocational course in business administration, who also describes how he combines activities: “While I’m eating dinner, I watch a movie or look up information, or chat a bit if I connect with a friend. I also combine this with listening to music online.” Leisure activities are thus introduced as temporal wedges of leisure that overlap with personal or household maintenance activities.

4.3. Transformation of the value of leisure activities

Most of the narratives of the interviewees suggest that leisure activities outside the home are less accessible than home-based digital leisure, and their value seems also to have varied with the introduction of home-based digital leisure. Alex, a 35-year-old postgraduate engineering student, points to how new leisure activities affect the attractiveness of traditional options: “A major advantage of digital leisure is ease of access, it’s there at hand, it’s easily accessible, we can define it in those terms, unlike other types of leisure.” He continues: “If I want to go out to the park, it involves having to put on a coat, leave the house, and walk to the park. Not like digital entertainment—you simply turn on the computer, or connect your device and sit there. Accessibility is a major factor.” The traditional alternative was often to stay home alone physically and socially.

An interviewee explains that the difference in the relative attractiveness of activities has increased even more with flat-rate Internet connection. The additional cost of using a digital connection for half an hour longer, for instance, to talk and chat with friends, or stream a series or feature film, is no longer perceived by the respondents. Javier describes how use of the Internet as a technology for leisure activities has changed:

The flat rate arrived, it was no longer half an hour here and another half hour at my neighbours’… before we used to all three of us get together in one of our homes for half an hour … to get on the Internet. Then came the flat rate. Things changed, downloads began to be possible, there was broadband, so the type of leisure changed. Before the Internet wasn’t much use for entertainment, but now yes, whether for downloading games, movies music … before leisure was a matter of accessing the Internet and doing it all there.

This reduction in monetary and time costs seems to be the benchmark by which respondents compare different alternatives. Javier underlines the monetary differences: “The kind of leisure we had before used to cost me a lot of money and now it costs me very little.” He adds: “Sorry, but I won’t spend money on leisure if I can get it through the Internet!”; also Andrés, an 18-year-old doing a vocational course in electronics, emphasizes differences in the accessibility and immediacy of digital leisure activities: “It’s very easy, you hardly have to move.” Manuel, a 29-year-old statistician, is even more explicit regarding time savings:

I save time, because that’s just what you feel if in real life you had to access everything that you get through the computer … Nowadays you get a book on the Internet, before you had to go to a library; instead of watching a movie on your computer, before you had to go to the cinema or rent it. You feel you can access everything, and that allows us to do a lot for half the effort.

4.4. Satisfaction with home-based digital leisure

Irrespective of whether a person is alone or with others (physically or digitally), digital leisure activities yield satisfactions to our informants. Some of these satisfactions are those provided by traditional leisure activities, even if less intensely, for instance, spending time with friends and entertainment; other satisfactions seem to be exclusive to digital leisure activities, for instance, personal enrichment.

4.4.1. Killing time with friends on the Internet

Digital leisure seems to lend itself well to those spare, idle moments between other activities, what some respondents refer to as “killing time”. Carmen, for instance, refers to digital leisure as “a way to kill time if you’re alone, if you cannot be with your friends and so have time on your hands.” And Andrés when has a moment to spare, plays social games:

I play a lot in games where things are created and maintained … [social network games], those based on play with others that help you or where you buy. The fact is that often, almost every day, I’m in there, doing one thing there, another here. Roughly once a day, to check things out, to get points and stuff …. It’s a game that does not lead to anything else. It isn’t difficult; you go shopping and do whatever. It’s silly; it’s just for hanging out.

For Adela, a 23-year-old taking a postgraduate course in audio-visual documentaries, social games are perfect for keeping in touch and being entertained at the same time. Adela interacts with her boyfriend and her brother through the World of Warcraft videogame (Blizzard Entertainment), a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). For Adela gaming is a social activity:

I don’t play on the computer by myself, what happens is I play with Miquel [boyfriend], he’s always connected from home, so that way I talk to him, we play and talk. I mostly connect with him. With my brother too, because we have something more to talk about through this.

Now, according to all informants, even when a person is physically at home, they are accessible and may be socially connected, chatting, talking, or playing with friends. Carmen, 22, a public relations postgraduate student, moved to Barcelona for work, leaving family and friends behind; explains it when she refers to the sensation of how physical distances are removed by online social media:

It’s like being with your friends all the time, even if they are in Galicia 800 miles away, I feel that they are close, I talk to them every day. For example, chatting, talking about how the exam went, or through Facebook. I think it’s a form of bonding.

4.4.2. Entertainment

Unlike merely killing time with friends, entertainment—according to our informants—requires a person’s time and concentration. Respondents tell us that entertainment usually consists of watching audio-visual material or participating in a game. They say that these activities enable them to relax after the routine of a working day; as explained by Carles, digital entertainment is “for winding down, that’s basically what I do either with movies or the Internet, what I do is try to disconnect from my day to day and not think about the things I think about 90% of the time.” Besides, this winding down leads Carmen and her roommates to enjoy films, each in the intimacy of their own rooms. Here Carmen reflects on what she does:

There are four laptops on the go. They like watching movies too … it’s weird, the films, something we could do it together, I realize now that we each watch films in our rooms with our headphones on, it’s a kind of evasion.

Unlike the evasion of watching movies, respondents playing online games, whether alone or with others, feel a sense of accomplishment when they achieve goals. Samuel, a 33-year-old engineer, describes the satisfaction he feels on achieving increasingly challenging goals, the interaction that takes place between the players, and the adrenaline rush obtained from games, making it necessary to take a break:

It’s entertaining, I have fun, I enjoy achieving something, it’s a challenge, it’s satisfying, especially with more difficult games, you’re getting through new stages, it’s nice getting to the end, getting to understand the game. There are games where feeling good means overcoming your adversary, it’s like football, basketball, car racing … especially when they’re there to hand, it’s a way to laugh, to have fun and tease each other. There are games that make your adrenaline rise, times when you feel stressed out, so you have to stop for a while.

Sometimes this is so intense that respondents lose all notion of time. As Carmen puts it: “Sometimes you get hooked, I say I’ll play a bit, I start playing and maybe I get hooked and when I realize it the hours have gone by … Also there is no waiting forced by programming schedules.” Carme adds that: “When watching series online, I start to watch one [episode] and since you can watch the next one, I might get hooked.” Samuel also tells us that sometimes according to the mood, this can get out of control, so he explains that when he divorced and went to live alone, he did not feel like going out “and I took refuge in video games and I got to do Crazy”, and explains “I started at seven in the morning and I slept at four playing and the next day I was a zombie, but I would come the next night and do it again”. Now, he confesses that he keeps doing it from time to time:

With friends, I do not mind getting the hours that are necessary and I do not close my eyes, I can stay until three in the morning. It does not matter “then details that it has been waning, but that it can happen again” when he bought a new video game, until he is finished.

4.4.3. Personal enrichment

There are informants who believe that digital leisure, unlike traditional leisure, is the source of a vast amount of knowledge, and a window into different worlds. In other words, apart from killing time and entertaining (which traditional entertainment also does), with digital leisure “you simultaneously learn stuff”, according to Marina, a 23-year-old graduate in audio-visual communication. This marks the difference between traditional leisure where Marina’s interaction is direct—a personal preference—and digital leisure, which she is not entirely opposed to, but rather uses in a complementary way; she therefore combines the best of both worlds: I think they complement each other; I think they’re two different kinds of leisure that offer different things. Digital leisure, maybe, offers knowledge, other leisure options offer relaxation, a better disconnectedness from routine.

Marina provides evidence of the learning opportunities offered by Internet forums and social platforms geared towards particular hobbies or tastes; leisure time thus improves personal skills, even though this is not the purpose of the activity. More specifically, Marina tells us that it was “through Second Life that I’ve learned most, I think this platform is very useful, you can take classes, talk to people you share interests and tastes with who can teach you things you didn’t know.” María reinforces this interpretation, referring to leisure activities that have enriched her knowledge:

In YouTube, you start listening to music and watching videos, you carry on and you often hear something you really like, you start to see related videos and find artists, or interviews, you didn’t know. I like to see interviews in English because I’m studying English for professional purposes, so I stay there, I take it as practicing, or because the people are interesting.

Beyond the knowledge to be acquired from the Internet, informants recognize that the digital technologies used for leisure brings them into contact with other worlds, other cultures, and other social experiences. Carles tells us that digital leisure has enabled him to “broaden my culture, because the Internet is culture too.” For Alex, the Internet also means culture: “Type in a web address and you know what’s going on in a city on the other side of the world.”

5. Discussion and conclusions

The narratives of the interviewees suggest that for this sample is increasingly common to watch television on the computer, but not in the traditional way. Viewers select programmes as if from a menu, most especially television series. In other words, not only does a technological substitution take place, there is also a change in viewing habits regarding the audiovisual productions broadcast by television stations. Viewers now watch selectively, when they want, and with whom they want. There are implications for households, since this freedom of choice produces family differences in bedroom culture (Bovill & Livingstone, 2001; Livingstone, 2007). The change is somewhat similar to the impact of portable radio sets on music listening habits, especially among the younger members of a family (Dolfsma, 2004a). Thus, household members gathered less and less around the radio, and, nowadays, the same is happening with the television set, which is gradually being relegated to the viewing of current events, the news, and live sports. The current transformation found with the sample is qualitatively different to that produced by the proliferation of television sets in the home (Livingstone, 2007; Van Rompaey & Roe, 2004), because, apart from producing heterogenic cultural experiences, the Internet-based digital technologies used to view audio-visual productions have also led to temporal fragmentation of television station programming and to the use of technologies to cover gaps; hence, activities can be flexible in terms of using time or killing time (Irani, Jeffries, & Knight, 2010)

The fragmentation of leisure activities has also led to a change in decision-making by household members. Now, according to the interviewees, they can watch what they like, when they like, in the order they want, and for as long as they want. They do not depend on programmers or broadcasters. Newspapers no longer exclusively furnish news; now they compete or cooperate with blogs written by enthusiasts who share their knowledge with others. Even though they may not have the means available to professional journalists, they compensate with their enthusiasm. With this fragmentation, living under the same roof is no longer any guarantee of having similar experiences—hence the phenomenon referred to as “living together separately” (Flichy, 1995) and being “alone together” (Turkle, 2011). Private experiences predominate over shared, public experiences (Livingstone, 2007). This fact can be seen as a negative repercussion of the use of digital technologies for leisure, if we understand the household as a nucleus of homogeneous experiences. However, the evidence provided by this study sample would indicate that the same digital technologies that produce differentiated experiences can also help connect physically separated members of the nuclear or extended household (English-Lueck, 1998; Venkatraman, 2012). Online social games and social networks are used to entertain, kill time, keep in touch, and schedule face-to-face leisure activities. Being able to choose the people with whom to share digital leisure activities can affect satisfaction levels within the household unit (Larson et al., 1997; Shaw & Dawson, 2001, 2003; Zabriskie & McCormick, 2003), especially among younger members (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2001).

This all suggests a transformation of households into networked units (Rainie & Wellman, 2012), as indicated by the inclusion of absent friends and relatives in leisure activities performed in the home, as happens when conducting leisure activities with those living abroad (Turkle, 2011). This mutation has implications for the meaning of leisure activities and the associated satisfactions. Churchill et al. (2007) have shown that households differ in the way they interpret leisure activities, with some seeing an opportunity of leisure in any core activity, and others only enjoying balance activities. We have seen that, in digital leisure activities, bringing friends and relatives into the home can change the meaning of a balance leisure activity, transforming it into a regular activity. But all this depends on the kind of household. One group may see digital leisure as offering an opportunity to remain connected and coordinate better, while another group may interpret the digital technologies as a threat to their unit. In the former group, the opportunities for interaction predominate, whereas in the latter group, enriching experiences are more important. We might expect conflicts to occur in the latter households, due precisely to their external interactions, whether symbolic or physical. As for the networked households (Rainie & Wellman, 2012), interaction increases the exchange of life experiences between members, although their exposure to cultural differences may be greater.

If, in the past, the proliferation of digital devices tended to increase the diversity of leisure activities performed privately in the home, then the digital communication technologies have tended to fragment leisure time and enhance the simultaneity of activities. The consumption of audio-visual productions has been fragmented, and news reading habits have shifted from the home to the workplace. It could be said that routine home-based leisure activities take the form of a temporal and spatial jigsaw, with some pieces overlapping. As Turkle (2011) pointed, teenagers can do their homework, and, at the same time, see and talk to an absent friend; thus, the school assignment overlaps a leisure activity—two activities that usually take place at different points in time and space. Whether this is a good thing (doing pleasurable activities) or a bad thing (conducting activities in a superficial fashion) is a matter for debate (Turkle, 2011).

Industrialization and the rise of cities has led to leisure for young people and adults becoming home-based. Digital leisure technologies, however, admit friends to the home, and so private spaces in the home become temporarily shared. Our respondents were unanimous in their preference for digital leisure activities that involve social interaction, although merely as a temporary substitute for face-to-face interaction. Digital leisure and the communication technologies reveal how leisure activities can be eminently social if the purpose is managing relationships. Having leisure time means doing what you want, when you want, with whom you want. However, the meaning of these three leisure properties differ according to household members’ roles and ages, and the household social position and context (Churchill et al., 2007).

As in all interpretive research, our theoretical inferences of findings are conditioned to the data gathered with the sample. Further analysis is needed to produce additional descriptions of the transformation of leisure activities in the home, and, consequently, our description and interpretation of the transformation of home-based leisure should be taken as a proposal for future research that would provide the evidence necessary to refine and theoretically generalize the interpretation proposed here.

Funding

This work was supported by Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca; Departament d'Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació [grant number 2014-SGR-592]; Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [grant number ECO2011-29558-C02-01].

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our informants, the editor and the anonymous reviewers. Ailish Maher assisted with the English in a version of this manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jordi López-Sintas

Jordi López-Sintas has a PhD in business economics. Professor of marketing and consumer research. Senior researcher at the Centre for Studies and Research in Humanities and the principal researcher in the Consumption, Markets and Culture Research Group.

Laura Rojas-DeFrancisco

Laura Rojas-DeFrancisco has a PhD in humanities. Assistant professor and researcher at the Universidad EAFIT and fellow researcher at the Consumption, Markets and Culture Research Group from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Ercilia García-Álvarez

Ercilia García-Álvarez has a PhD in economics. Full Professor. Senior researcher at the Centre for Studies and Research in Humanities, and member of the Consumption, Markets and Culture Research Group.