A Survey of Modern Life: Outdoor Time
How much time do Americans spend outdoors?
This report is the sixth in a series of reports on the results from a set of consumer surveys on health-related behaviors and the influence of popular products and services. Fielded by Building H, a project to build health into everyday life, the surveys examined the influences of products and services such as video streaming, food delivery services, automobiles, rideshare services, mapping services and mobile gaming on eating habits, physical activity, sleep and other behaviors. This report is based on two general surveys that asked thousands of Americans about their day-to-day health behaviors and their attitudes toward those behaviors. More information on the survey project can be found here.
Key Findings
- A majority of Americans (58.8%) indicated that they spend one hour or less per day outdoors and more than a third (37.4%) are getting 30 minutes or less.
- Nearly one in five Americans (18.3%) spends less than 15 minutes a day outdoors.
- Women are indoors much more than men: 45.4% of women spend 30 minutes a day or less outdoors, compared with only 29.1% of men. They’re 64% more likely to go outdoors for 15 minutes a day or less.
- Young people also spend a lot of time indoors: people aged 18–24 years were significantly more likely to spend 30 minutes or less per day outdoors (44.9%) than the rest of the population (31.7%).
- Outdoor time is also associated with income: people making less than $50,000 a year were 2.6 times more likely (28.1% to 10.8%) to spend less than 15 minutes per day outside and nearly twice as likely (50.7% to 27.4%) to spend 30 minutes or less than people making $50,000 or more.
Introduction
Building H developed a set of 10 surveys of American adults that looked at the prevalence of five important health-related behaviors and one potentially unhealthy behavior, use of selected consumer products and services, and attitudes toward corporate responsibility for health impacts.
Questions across two general surveys asked about sleep, physical activity, spending time with friends, getting outdoors, screen time and eating patterns. (Additional surveys assessed the impact of different types of products and services — video streaming, mobile gaming, ride-share, mapping and directions apps, food and grocery delivery services — on different health behaviors.)
The surveys were conducted using Google Consumer Surveys in December, 2020. Each of the general surveys had sample sizes of 5,000 adults (18 years or older) in the U.S.. Samples were chosen to represent the U.S. population distribution across ages, genders, races, and geographic regions. The general surveys questioned participants on both their experiences with and attitudes towards health behaviors (i.e. sleep, socialization, time spent outdoors, eating patterns and physical activity).
Each of the general surveys asked respondents about the time they spend outdoors. One survey simply asked how much time, on a typical weekday, people spend outdoors (and not in a vehicle). Spending time outdoors, especially in green spaces or in nature, is an important behavior that can bring multiple health benefits. Being in nature has been shown to lead to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol; reduced heart rate and blood pressure; reduced inflammation and increased immune function. Nature walks can lead to improved mood and lower anxiety. Additional benefits can include increased vitamin D production (for better bone health), reduced risk for myopia, and better alignment with circadian rhythms, which can lead to better sleep.
Findings
Time Spent Outdoors
Respondents were asked how much time they spend outdoors on a typical weekday.
- A majority of respondents (58.8%) indicated that they spend one hour or less per day outdoors and more than a third (37.4%) are getting 30 minutes or less.
- Nearly one in five respondents (18.3%) spends less than 15 minutes a day outdoors.
Demographic Variation
Women are getting significantly less outdoor time than men:
- 45.4% of women spend 30 minutes a day or less outdoors, compared with only 29.1% of men. They’re 64% more likely to go outdoors for 15 minutes a day or less.
- A majority (51.8%) of men spend an hour or more per day outdoors — as compared to only 30.6% of women.
While age differences did not have general effects, there was one anomaly: respondents aged 18–24 were significantly more likely to spend 30 minutes or less per day outdoors (44.9%) than the rest of the population (31.7%) and less likely to spend an hour or more outdoors (35.2%) than others (47.6%).
The survey revealed interesting regional differences: respondents in the Northeast (42.6%) and the Midwest (45.0%) were more likely to report 30 minutes or less than those from the West (32.6%) or the South (33.7%) and less likely to report spending an hour or more outdoors per day.
While there were no significant differences among racial/ethic groups, there were significant differences based on income.
- Respondents making less than $50,000 a year were 2.6 times more likely (28.1% to 10.8%) to spend less than 15 minutes per day outside and nearly twice as likely (50.7% to 27.4%) to spend 30 minutes or less than people making $50,000 or more.
- Respondents making $50,000 or more per year were 53% more likely (51.2% to 33.4%) to spend an hour or more outside each weekday than people making less than $50,000.
Attitudes About Outdoor Time
In a separate survey, we asked people “How satisfied are you with the amount of outdoor time you get each week?” and the responses showed that Americans are pretty evenly split on their perceptions of whether they’re getting enough time outdoors. 49.9% reported that they were getting “plenty of” (17.1%) or “enough” (32.8%) outdoor time, while 50.1% reported getting “too little” (34.9%) or “far too little” (15.2%) outdoor time. There were no significant differences between men and women, or among different ages, geographic regions, incomes or races and ethnicities.
Discussion
The survey results underscore the idea that we have, essentially, become indoor people. A majority of respondents indicated being outdoors for an hour or less on a typical weekday, which is, if one assumes 16 waking hours per day (which is generous given what we know about how infrequently people get eight hours of sleep), then that one hour represents only 6.7% of waking time. And more than 37% are getting half of that (3.3%) or less. The shift to an indoor lifestyle is no doubt connected with the nature of work, which, with industrialization, has shifted away from agricultural work to more indoor vocations. On the other hand, people over 65, many of whom are no longer working full time, do not spend more time outdoors than other age groups, suggesting that the indoor nature of our lifestyles is not only connected to our work experience, but has established deeper roots.
While these numbers sound low, there is a fair question of how much time outdoors is sufficient to obtain valuable health benefits. Unlike other behaviors like eating, sleeping and physical activity, which all have recommended daily amounts, there’s no clear guideline for how many minutes a day someone should be outdoors. The issue is complicated by the wide range of outdoor experiences — some benefits appear to come from daylight, some from sun exposure (which to be fair, also carries risks), and some from interactions with nature or even wilderness. Much of the scientific research on this topic has focused on exposure to nature in particular. Our survey question, which asks about time spent outdoors, bundles the wide range of outdoor experiences into a single metric.
This lack of clarity around the question of how much is enough is reflected in the response to the question about whether people were satisfied with the amount of time they spend outdoors. Americans are split pretty evenly on this question. If the responses were correlated with the amount of time actually spent outdoors (because the questions were on different surveys we have no way of knowing whether the people that are less satisfied are the ones spending less time outdoors), we might have a clearer understanding of what Americans believe is an appropriate amount of time to spend outdoors. Due to this limitation, we can’t draw such conclusions.
Two findings — that women spend significantly less time outdoors than men and that young people (ages 18–24) spend the least amount of time outdoors merit more research to understand the explanations. The lack of outdoor time among youth merits tracking over time to see if it is related to their age (as in their stage of life) or if it more idiosyncratically reflects the behavior of this particular generation. The income differences are sadly familiar and reflect a disturbingly consistent pattern we’ve seen throughout this series: healthy behaviors, whether cooking dinner, sleeping better, or spending time outdoors, have become, in effect, luxury experiences. Except, perhaps when they’re not: people making less than $50,000 per year are more likely to spend eight or more hours a day outside than people making iver $50,000, perhaps suggesting a higher prevalence of outdoor employment among that cohort.
The surveys have several limitations worth noting. They were conducted in December of 2020, and while they asked about typical experience (as opposed to asking for recall of the previous week), it is possible that COVID had significantly shifted people’s behavior. The fact that it took place during Winter could have also skewed the results. Finally, it asked about typical weekdays and not about weekends, when people are likely to spend more time outdoors, so it doesn’t fully capture how much time people are spending outdoors.
Conclusion
As Florence Williams points out in The Nature Fix, her excellent review of the science on the effects of exposure to nature on health, humans have spent 99.9 percent of our history living in nature. Yet, in modern life, we have become indoor people, with the majority of Americans spending less than 7% of our waking hours outside. The research on the health impacts of all this indoor time is only recently emerging and far more is needed, as is better descriptive research on how often, and in what circumstances, people are spending time outdoors. The variety of health benefits that accrue from being outdoors, and in nature, merit this attention.
The need to study these phenomena more ardently is growing more acute as new technologies generate more products and services that will keep us indoors: cinema-quality video services are available 24/7; online ordering and rapid delivery services obviate trips to restaurants, grocery stores or many shops; self-driving cars promise door-to-door pickup and dropoff; and entertainment (not to mention business applications) based on virtual reality (VR) will give us more reasons to stay in.
Understanding how significant a public health concern — and, given the disparities, a social justice concern — these developments could be is currently held back by a lack of research and consistent monitoring of the trends. It’s time to close those gaps.
Acknowledgments
Thomas Goetz, Sara Singer, Carlo Martinez and Brittany Sigler all contributed to the conceptualization and development of the surveys; Carlo Martinez contributed data analysis.
