When Leisure Activities Feel Worse than Work
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iStock/Thinkstock(MAINZ, Germany) — There’s nothing like “maxing and relaxing” after a hard day of work. For many, that involves plopping down in front of a TV or computer screen.
However, there’s a dark side to these seemingly harmless leisure activities, according to researchers at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany and the VU University Amsterdam in the Netherlands .
Apparently, a lot of people who turn off their minds when they turn on the TV or play video games feel like they’re failures because they’re not doing anything constructive.
In interviews with 471 people who talked about what they do to decompress after work, the researchers discovered that rather than delivering enjoyment, TV and other electronic devices wind up as a “burden and a stressor rather than a recovery resource.”
Dr. Leonard Reinecke went on to explain that the findings demonstrate “that in the real life, the relationship between media use and well-being is complicated and that the use of media may conflict with other, less pleasurable but more important duties and goals in everyday life.”
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