Performative leisure or 21st century fun

The Future Foundation’s Heather Corker says this will be the decade in which leisure becomes much more smart and active…

Leisure is undergoing a real-time revolution. No longer are we willing (or compelled) to wait to parade in front of our friends the important events or activities in our lives. We use smart and social technology postively to showcase our lives – broadcasting our presence at the trendy restaurant or holiday destination with a live stream of updates that allows us to seize the social zeitgeist. And thus, the tweet or Facebook post has become a strategic tool for status enhancement.

The result is what we might term performative leisure – the consumer’s growing willingness (and ever improving ability) to use leisure moments as real-time records of achievement. As we define it here, this is a trend which will exert an ever more powerful impact on how we manage and present our online lives.

Exposing and sharing our lives across social networks has meant that leisure time must now be maximised-  that all social activities must be selected with care to ensure that no opportunity to undertake better or more cutting-edge leisure is overlooked. As consumers have become more accustomed to their networked lives, so concern has grown about the need to manage one’s online persona – and control the ways in which friends/contacts perceive our activities, interests, daily lives…

We know from Future Foundation research (2011), for example, that nearly one in five people in the UK have posted updates which they have later regretted – a figure which climbs to 30% among 12-15 year olds and more than doubles for those aged 16-24.

Moreover, it is nearly 50% of social networkers who admit that they try to manage their profile so that they are portrayed in the best possible light, with around three in 10 saying they upload specific pictures in order to look more interesting as a person – and, due to under-claiming, we wonder whether the actual figure here might not be a little higher. What we imply here is that the attitude has strengthened that clever posting = cultural capital, thereby elevating the importance of real-time updates as a record of personal savoir-vivre.

The swell in access to and use of the mobile internet is allowing for connectivity during all moments of our lives and is transforming the consumer’s ability to transmit real-time records of their day-to-day activities. There are simply fewer and fewer occasions when we cannot keep our friends and contacts informed of our movements.

We know again from Future Foundation research that around 30% of consumers prefer to watch programmes at the same time as their friends – a figure which jumps to over 50% among 16-24s. And one in 10 express interest in participating in live chats with fellow viewers. Can we expect these figures to grow as televisions become more sophisticated and ever more daily activities are integrated inside social networks? Absolutely – we will want to share reactions and demonstrate that we are watching the right programme at the moment of broadcast.

And as we begin to process dual streams of information within one screen, will we start measuring the success of a programme based on the numbers of tweets and updates it generates, rather than its overnight viewing figures? It must be likely.

There already exists a “dual-screening” phenomenon. We know, for example, that nearly 50% of Brits have watched television while surfing the internet on a laptop (with about 20% doing the same, but on a mobile). As we progress, however, these activities will be integrated within the same screen; the television which broadcasts the latest show will also display real-time updates from Facebook, Twitter, news sites, email services… speaking to the future direction of this trend.

This will be the decade in which leisure becomes much more smart and, in a sense, active. Of course, we recognise that there will always be those who use leisure time to actively switch off. But more of us will maintain our social CV while on-the-go; more consumers will use leisure to earn instant social status.

For more, please contact:

• Richard Nicholls – 020 3008 6103 / [email protected]
• Heather Corker – 020 3008 6099 / [email protected]