Are UK leisure activities normalising again?

The UK has seen a lot of changes over the last decade. With a global pandemic to contend with as well as the resulting lockdowns and work from home restrictions, the last couple of years have been more difficult. People’s movements were severely curtailed and leisure activities for a large proportion of the population had to change. However, with things getting back to normal, are we now seeing a reversal taking place?

Online gaming

Online gaming registered one of the biggest increases in terms of volume of leisure activity. It wasn’t just PlayStation and Xbox that had a surge in users, either. Online gambling saw a big influx in new users, with more people claiming the LeoVegas bonus over the first month of lockdown than had been seen in a very long time. It meant that there were more people playing esports against each other, and more people playing at online casinos.

However, this didn’t last in the long term. Once the initial spike of people playing died down, it slowly started to revert to the mean. It didn’t happen overnight, though, and it wasn’t until people started returning to working away from home that the levels of online play dropped to pre-pandemic levels.

Grassroots sports

This is something that completely died out during the pandemic. As the country was locked down, it meant that people were unable to travel to amateur sporting events. This was especially disappointing for children’s sports, as this is something many kids look forward to at a weekend.

This is not the case any longer, though. Amateur sports at pretty much all levels are back on in full flow. While there is still a recommendation to avoid crowds where practical, on the whole, things are back exactly as they were before. It means that although most kids have missed a year of playing sports, it is back to normal now and there are no signs that this will change.

Work/life balance

This is one of the few things that was a positive from the pandemic. People tended to have a lot more free time over the course of lockdown and being affected by other restrictions. With some employers putting people on furlough and others allowing staff to work from home, it meant that there was more time to do what you wanted to do. This is vitally important to retain positive mental health, so it was a welcome move for a lot of people.

However, as most jobs are back up and running as usual, it does mean that a lot of people are missing this benefit now, since they no longer have the additional leisure time available to them. While there were some issues surrounding lockdowns, it would have been nice to have seen employers understand this and give workers the chance to retain some of their extra leisure time. This would have also allowed for the economy to see an extra boost as more people took up and maintained new hobbies.