Examination of Personal Motivations of Leisure Choices in the Social Media Era
Date
Authors
Workman, Patrick
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
In 2004, the world began an ever growing relationship and interactions with social media. Social media has shown not to be a short lived fad, but a trend with an extremely high usage rate. Company valuations of Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are in the billions. Discretionary leisure time has shifted from forms of more traditional leisure to e-based activities. Staples of recreation such as sports, indoor and outdoor fitness, and traditional programs are often bypassed by social media and online interactive gaming by participants who are finding new mediums for interaction. Recreation agencies, both private and public, are working to discover the best ways to integrate technology and keep up with user’s need for this new idea of a customized society and emersion in continuing technological trends. This mixed methods research examined the user’s involvement in e-based activities and how it may have displaced former leisure practices that are considered more traditional program classifications. The research further studied a person’s need to participate in all leisure activities and the benefits derived from interpersonal interactions as well as how online interactions in certain applications can replicate characteristics of face to face interactions. Also assessed were the integration and effectiveness of technology and adoption of social media usage by recreation agencies. To test the hypothesis that speaks to the changing trends of leisure and the emergence of e-based activities as a major component of a person’s discretionary leisure time, interview surveys were conducted with recreation agency users. Through participant responses and reviewing the need for both interaction and usage of social media and technology as a form of human connectivity; this research postulated users are supplementing and in some cases replacing traditional face to face leisure programming with the use of social media and technology to satisfy their need for interpersonal relations.
Description
Keywords
Leisure, Recreations, E-based literature, Social media, Motivations, Interpersonal interactions