24/7 Culture

Often people talk about how we have a 24/7 lives. This seems to be true in one sense but false in the other. Today people are working fewer hours than ever before and have more time for leisure and enjoyment. Sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Netflix prove our standard of living is higher because people have more time for leisure activities. To think that these days someone could find rare footage for almost nothing is astounding. In today’s society, we have an on demand culture. People can access information 24 hours a day 365 days a year via the internet.

The biggest difference I see is the access to information. Now we can research things that use to take hours looking through books in a matter of seconds. Researchers have can now spend less time trying to find the data and more time creatively thinking about what they want to spend time on. So if we were to take someone that was working 60 hours in 1980 and someone working 60 hours today the person working 60 hours in 1980 would be very unproductive in modern times. Today a typical business person can check messages while waiting or sitting in a car. Years ago someone might call a business and they would get the secretary to take a memo and it would have to wait for the next day. In today’s society, we are more connected and wired than ever in human history. So in essence a worker could be working less hours today and still be more productive than the worker of generations ago because of technology.

One thing I have noticed is that technology has allowed us not to have to plan as much. If two people were dating in the early 1990’s they would have to call each other (assuming the person was home) to make sure they were going to pick up their date at the right time. Today in less than a second we can change plans. I think people take this for granted.

Although, there are some people who wish we could go back to the yesteryears of only having three TV stations, phones without text messaging, and in general simpler times. This of course is foolish and silly. We all benefitted from these technologies that not only made live more enjoyable but easier.

I just did a search for 24 hour restaurants in Houston and found 16 (not including Whataburger, McDonalds, Waffle House, Denny’s, and IHOP) which are also open 24 hours a day. I would be interested to see if there was any type of data on whether or not 24 hour restaurants have increased over the decades.

It looks like 24/7 culture has only benefitted society and has not taken anything away.