For those who are in theirforties, a I am, changes in how people spend their free time in the last 20 years are huge. Life was aimplier then, anyway. Nowadays we are too busy, we spend a lot of time commuting to work in mass transports, and we bear a lot of stressing tasks and crowded schedule boards. I remember that when I was a child, playing on the streets was very common and that tought us a bit of responsibility, self-confidence and social skills.

Nowadays, in medium and big cities, is not easy to find those crews of children. It seems that modern parents are afraid of that gloomy atmosphere of debauchery that lies in our big cities. Anyway, leisure is expensive and our economy is weaker than 20 years ago. So we are going out less than then. Even if now we have modern devices that do the tedious house chores for us (or, at least, leverage the heavy burden), it seems that our spare time is shrinking!

Due to the expensiveness of some leisure activities like going out to dinner, cinema... people has switched their social life to the Internet and even the music we listen to and the films we watch are mainly downloaded from it. We don't spare time face-to-face, but sharing messages or e-mails with our friends. Other fact I have noticed is that, due to the fact that we spend a lot of time in the office, and most jobs are sedentary, working out has risen as a very popular activity in order to keep in shape and healthy. Elderly people, whose jobs used to be involve a lot of phisical work, wouldn't have need this "new fashion" we are involved in. This arising of popular sport is , for me , one of the best ways to deal with health problems and a funny activity in order to take advantage of our spare time.