A Decade of Progress: How Technology Has Shaped The Way We Spend Our Time

Those of us in the tech world always have an eye on the future, striving for the next great thing. Once in a while though it is important to pause and remember how far we have come. Looking back over the past decade, for example, there is no denying that the world is a very different place than it was in 2014.

Considered by many technology experts as the year that the internet came of age, 2014 was a tipping point into our always-connected world. The year saw a boom in smartphone ownership and mobile data consumption extending the reach of connectivity out of homes and workplaces and into palms and pockets across the globe.

At the beginning of the period, only two-thirds of UK adults owned a smartphone, but by 2023 that skyrocketed to a 94%, and a quantum leap in both technology and infrastructure has blurred the once distinct lines between the digital and the physical worlds. From something as mundane as summoning a taxi to interacting with friends, everything has changed.

Nobody would question that this extraordinary proliferation of technology has made our lives easier, but has it also fundamentally altered the way we spend our time, and what does that mean for the future? We at BanklessTimes reflect on a decade of progress:

* assumed the inverse of the stats for in person retail spending - 89.3% in 2014 and 73.7% in 2024

High Street Bank Visits Have Decreased by 35%

Remember the days of queuing at your local bank branch, Passbook book in hand? In 2014, more than 60% of UK citizens visited bank branches, but in the space of just 10 years that dropped to just 1 in 4 (25%). While traditional bricks-and-mortar branches were once a staple of the high street, more and more branches are closing down as users turn to more convenient and accessible digital services or neo-banks. Now, more than 90% of individuals have used digital services at some point during the preceding year.

The picture is very different from how things looked in 2014, when only 45% of UK citizens were using online banking services on a regular (weekly) basis. Back then, most banking interactions took place on smartphones with limited functionality, and there was heavy reliance on alternative channels such as branches and contact centres.

Digital banking has come a long way in a short space of time, but it seems that there is much more to come. While over-55s are proving the hardest group to win over, the majority of Millennials (64%) now prefer to use app-based banking than an in-branch service, and a small but significant minority of the British public (12%) have even turned to digital-only banks for their primary accounts. An enormous uptick is predicted over the next four years, with up to 45% of the British public expected to have digital-only bank accounts by 2028. This trajectory will undoubtedly be driven by GenZ, nearly two-thirds of whom now use digital-only banks.

If this trend continues, it is quite possible that in another decade’s time, high street bank branches will have long been consigned to the pages of history.

The UK is Gaming Less in 2023

2014 saw the UK population glued to their phones as Candy Crush took the country by storm. Even the House of Commons wasn’t immune from the hype, with one Tory MP forced to issue an apology after being caught crushing candies during a session on pension reforms. It’s perhaps not a surprise to hear that in 2014, the United Kingdom spent an average of 5.44 hours per week playing video games. The 16-24 year old age group were by far the biggest consumers averaging at 7.4 hours each week. On the other end of the scale, the 35-44 year old age group, perhaps owing to their family commitments, had less time for games, averaging just 4.4 hours per week.

In more recent years, however, gaming has increased and the average adult now spends 7 and a half hours per week playing video games - a marked increase relative to 2014.

Perhaps one reason for this surge is an uptake among the older generations, with more than two-thirds (67%) of 35-44 year olds and more than half (54%) of 45-54 year olds now playing electronic games. This is perhaps one area where the trend is for technological advances to consume more of adults’ free time, rather than liberate it for real-life pursuits, such as health and physical activity.

More Than a Quarter of the UK is Inactive

While gaming is very much of a product of the digital world, its real life counterpart - exercise - leaves the nation very much divided.

There is a significant proportion of the population that takes exercise seriously. In 2014, for example, 52% of men and 45% of women took part in exercise activities at least monthly, and in 2021-2022, 63.1% met the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines of 150 minutes of intense physical activity a week. For this group, there is no evidence that the growth of the digital world over the past decade has had a discernible impact on the time they dedicate to working out.

However, a 2014 NHS report also found that 26% of women and 19% of men in the United Kingdom were classed as “inactive”, undertaking only very limited physical activity. In 2021-2022, 25.8% of the UK population as a whole was put into this category, pointing to a slight increase in inactivity amongst men in recent years, coinciding with the recent technology boom and the increased appetite for gaming amongst the older generation.

While 25.5% of adults spent at least some time taking part in physical exercise in 2023, clocking an average of 2.4 hours a week, what is striking is that almost twice as many (50.9%) admit to dedicating their free time to the virtual world - computers, smartphones and games - instead of exercising.

There is temptation to chalk this up to the recent proliferation of smartphones and social media, but data from 2015 indicates that mass media has long been a distraction, be that in the form of television, music or literature, which occupied men for an average of 16.4 hours a week and women for 14.4 hours. Even in 2015, this was a very long way off the 2.5 hours and 1.8 hours (2.15 average) per week spent by men and women respectively playing sports or engaging in outdoor pursuits.

While the form and content of media might have changed significantly over the past decade, the propensity to dedicate our free time to the more leisurely pursuits of the virtual world remains very much the same.

Real Life Interactions Have Declined Over The Past Decade

While many adults are finding more and more time in their lives to dedicate to gaming, it seems that real life interactions have declined over the past decade. The latest data from 2023 indicates that we as a nation spend an average of less than four hours a month socialising with friends – generally meeting up only twice within that period – with the principal reasons for the lack of interaction given as distance (36%), a busy work schedule (35%) and family commitments (33%).

Comparing the position with 2014 is difficult because there are no equivalent statistics for that year, but in 2012 The Office of National Statistics painted a significantly more optimistic picture, showing that the majority of UK residents (63%) aged 15 and over met socially with friends, relatives and work colleagues at least once a week. Many might blame the Covid-19 pandemic for this apparent narrowing of our social circles. However, it is clear that the shift has already begun in 2019, when Sainsbury's found that half of all Britons were only socialising with family or friends once a month.

The UK Dedicates Almost Two Hours a Day to Browsing Social Media

In 2024, and coinciding with a decline in the amount of time that we dedicate to socialising with family and friends, UK adults are spending more of their lives than ever before in the virtual world: clocking up a somewhat embarrassing 1 hour and 49 minutes every day on social media. TikTok boasts the highest average time per user (at 34 hours per month), but YouTube accounts for the greatest overall share of total social media time (at 28 hours and 5 minutes). The figures for Facebook are significantly lower, at 19 hours and 47 minutes, although it still ranks third in terms of average time per user.

There is no denying that social media has changed out of all recognition since 2014. At the time, TikTok was still two years from launching, and Instagram, without its reels, was still for sharing pictures of your breakfast through the Valencia filter. Over the past decade, the almost addictive popularity of social media has garnered followings across all demographics like never before. Back in 2014, the average adult (over 16 years) could only manage to clock 33 minutes per day on social media channels, which pales into insignificance compared with the current average across all age groups of almost two hours.

Net Closures of British Stores at their Lowest Since 2017

A decade ago, internet sales only accounted for a small proportion of total retail sales at just 10.7%. In what is a relatively short space of time this has boomed, standing at an astonishing 26.3% today, spurred on by seismic change to online shopping habits heralded by the Covid-19 pandemic. The lockdown period saw UK online shopping sales soar to 48%, and there has been a lasting impact on the Great British High Street.

While the pandemic certainly provided an impetus for growth, the technology-driven trend towards online shopping was already clear in 2014, which alone saw a net total of 987 high street shops disappear – almost three-times the number that had gone under in 2013.

With UK residents spending an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes on Amazon alone during May 2023, one might think that the future of the high street has already been sealed. In a surprise development, however, the past year has bucked the trend, with the net closures of UK stores at the lowest rate since 2017. The proportion of online retail sales has also started to stabilise and in some areas is even showing a decline, suggesting that in-person shopping might be making its resurgence.

These conflicting patterns make it difficult to predict how the balance of our time between online and physical shopping will develop over the next decade, and much may turn on the ingenuity of offerings from new entrants to the online marketplace. The introduction of Temu in 2023 is a prime example, quickly reaching an astonishing 29% of all online adults within just two months of its April launch.

There can be no doubt that technology and communications have progressed in leaps and bounds over the past decade, and Ryan Matthews, Technology Expert at BanklessTimes, believes that this can only be a good thing, provided that it is treated with a little caution and circumspection.

“Recent advances have in many ways, big and small, enhanced our lives and changed the way we spend our time. I for one do not yearn for the days of queuing up at the bank to pay in a cheque, and would struggle to imagine a world without the immediacy and convenience of Uber and Amazon Prime. But at the same time, it is important to remember that Facetiming a friend is no substitute for meeting for dinner or a drink, and that a session on TikTok is no replacement for exercise and fresh air. We are rightly excited to see what the next decade brings, but we would do well to remember that technology is our servant not our master”.