Humans are curious – and we’re looking into each

other's lives more than ever. But in a pandemic,

this might not simply be a nosy habit.

As our own social worlds have shrunk as a result of the pandemic, the lives of others have
never been more compelling.

We’re browsing photo essays capturing the workdays of overstretched medical staff, consuming
news about politicians breaking lockdown and celebrities jetting off to private islands. Some of
us peek outside to see which neighbours wear masks to take out the rubbish. We’re also
spending record amounts of time online: UK watchdog Ofcom found last June that adults were
spending on average a quarter of their waking day using the internet, while a global survey early
in the pandemic found 40% of consumers were spending longer on social media.

It’s not surprising we’re consuming information, news and personal updates. We’ve always been
curious as a species; our own stories are formed by the exchanges we have with other people’s
lives and stories, says Brunel University London senior lecturer Anne Chappell, who recently
examined this behavior alongside Plymouth University associate professor Julie Parsons.
During the pandemic, however, our interest in other people’s lives seems to be reaching new
heights.

We've always been curious – but now we

have so many more ways to learn about other people

But although it may seem a bit nosy – or even voyeuristic – this urge may not be a bad thing. In
times like these, when behaviours and norms are unprecedented and evolving, observing other
people can help us process each twist and turn of the pandemic – and even learn how to adapt
ourselves.

A shared understanding
Of course, voyeurism is nothing new. We had society pages giving accounts of
proto-Kardashians in 19th Century newspapers well before we had People magazine, which
emerged well before Instagram Stories. Today, though, we have far more ways to peek over the
metaphorical fence than we did even a decade ago. News providers have proliferated, offering
think pieces and photo essays that add dimension and human perspectives to the stories of the
day. On social media, we don’t just have Facebook, but Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and now
Clubhouse – a plethora of diversified platforms that all provide different ways to observe others.

This desire to look into the lives of others isn’t just voyeurism, however: the word, says
Chappell, often implies illicit or sexual behaviour – a passive observer watching others actively
engage, sometimes but not always with the consent of those being watched. Yet what we get
from looking at other people’s stuff – an act, says Chappell, that is often unconscious on our
parts – isn’t a “morbid fascination”. Rather, it is a more active exchange, an effort to make sense
of the world around us. Chappell mentions the historical diaries of people like Anne Frank,
saying they’re more than one person’s thoughts – they tell us about both the individual life and
how society functioned around them.

Observing other people can help us process each

twist and turn of the pandemic
Our desire to observe, then, seems to be born from a desire to exchange information about who
we are through the stories we tell about ourselves. “All the stories that we encounter directly in
person with other people – and those we read about and see about and hear about and engage
with – are all having some kind of impact in shaping our shared understandings of society,” says
Chappell.

Learning and processing

Since Covid-19 swept the globe, we’re even more interested in these stories; our heightened
desire to consume all kinds of information in part reflects our curtailed daily lives. Whether it’s
colleagues we’re missing from the office or the parents from your child’s football team, “with
increased social isolation during the pandemic, we are more curious and interested in the lives
of those around us”, says Sabrina Romanoff, a clinical psychologist at New York City’s Lenox
Hill Hospital.

Social media, something that brings an element of escapism from the same four walls, allows us
to peer into the lives of others on a virtual plane – whether by analysing bookshelves of
interviewees or obsessing over a viral recipe strangers make in their kitchens. It provides a
placebo for connection opportunities in the real world that have been stripped away, says Laura
Tarbox, an expert in cultural and brand strategy who studies emerging shifts and behaviours in
social media for clients.

Although these interactions might not be as satisfying as real-life encounters, social-media

platforms are one of the few ways we have left to spontaneously connect with other humans,
says Romanoff. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat all help us cross virtual paths
with those we’d otherwise likely never meet during lockdown, adds Tarbox.

Observing the lives of medical

professionals helps us process the pandemic's impact on our society

Social media also plays a role in rapidly establishing new norms, something that becomes clear
when we cringe at photos of unmasked guests at a wedding, or pass judgement on
palm-tree-filled Instagrams of a celebrity’s clearly non-essential travel. “We've been monitoring
social media, both consciously and unconsciously, to gain an understanding of the new ‘rules’ of
acceptability during the pandemic – in short, to absorb a new social code being created in real
time,” says Tarbox. “What is acceptable to do, how should we be behaving, who is it OK to be
with, and what is safe to share? ... Social media is where we pick up the cues and learn the
rules.”

Other information sources feed in, too, whether from reading articles, watching documentaries
or observing passers-by, and they become our textbook for rapidly changing times. “We use
others as data points,” says Romanoff. “Folks use this data to gauge how to make appraisals
and assessments of their own lives. We are social creatures and rely on others in our tribe and
community to refer to when making relativity-based judgments.”

Social media is where we pick up the cues and

learn the rules – Laura Tarbox
Other people’s lives – whether a fly-on-the-wall TV medical documentary, a Facebook post
about a friend’s Covid-19-stricken grandmother or the comments section of a news story
announcing a record death toll – also provide a locus for collectively processing this
unprecedented situation. Seeing others’ fears laid bare in a post, or validated by others liking or
commenting on it, can have a calming effect, says Romanoff. She adds this is a process called
“projective identification”. “Aspects of the self, like fear and dread, are split off and attributed to
an external source, like a friend’s status update on Facebook or a catastrophic article with
hundreds of shares,” she says.

‘Storied beings’
Of course, too much news, social media or even fence-peeking can all be a bit much; when our
cognitive processes are overtaxed trying to integrate distressing information into our internal
worlds, it “only compounds and intensifies the stress and anxiety folks are already
experiencing”, says Romanoff.

But if you’re finding yourself scrolling through Instagram to see what friends are up to, watching
programmes about frontline workers or reading articles on the pandemic’s mental health impact,
these aren’t idle pursuits. Even if it’s unconscious, it’s a way of coping with the constraints of our
times, processing our personal anxieties and making sense of our strange new world.

“We're always looking to the Other because we're storied beings – because we make sense of
our lives in relation to others,” says Chappell.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

There’s lots of pressure to live up to certain life

achievements on a strict timeline. But those milestones
are often arbitrary – and way more harmful than we
realise.
Nakul Singh is on track. At 30, he’s finishing up his residency in ophthalmology at
Massachusetts Eye and Ear specialty hospital in Boston, looking forward to starting his
fellowship year and thinking about marrying his girlfriend in the next couple of years.

This is just how he had envisioned things would go. “My personal goal was to be married or
engaged by the time I was finishing my residency,” he says. These goals didn’t match up to any
intrinsic logic or biological necessity. “I don’t know why. It just seemed like the right sort of
timeframe,” he says. When he looked around at what everyone else was doing, it seemed like
they were getting married in their late 20s or early 30s, so he matched up his expectations and
plans to follow suit. Plus, his grandparents kept teasing him to get married before they died.

But Singh wasn’t always so sure that life would go according to plan. While his friends started to
get serious with their significant others right after college, he was single, wondering when he
was going to find his person. He stressed over getting into the right medical school, then
winning a good residency. Life felt uncertain and, as he waited and waited to meet the right
partner, he worried that he was falling behind.

Every society has a few important life milestones, and those achievements are often tied to a
specific timeline. For instance, Western societies prioritise moments like graduating from college
at 22, getting married by 30, having kids and buying a house before 35. We mark success by
ticking off the boxes, and worry that missing a deadline means we’re failing in our lives or
careers. But where do those metrics come from?
As it turns out, these all-important deadlines are often arbitrary, and the pressure to achieve
them sometimes comes from amorphous, unidentifiable places. They also aren’t as set in stone
as they may seem. From generation to generation, changes in technology and the economy,
advances in science and even the political climate can turn what once seemed like a social
necessity into an antiquated expectation. Understanding where these expectations come from,
and how they differ from the reality we live in now, is important for making personal milestones
that are meaningful, instead of clinging to outdated expectations.

The conditions in which younger

generations achieve have changed dramatically – but the pressure to hit major life milestones
like getting married hasn't moved

The mystery of social norms

From the moment humans pop out of the womb, we are ready to learn. We pick up the language
around us and learn the rules of our society, what behaviour is allowed, what’s considered good
or bad. “We’re absolutely built that way: to learn norms and to comply with them,” says Jeffrey
Arnett, a senior research scholar at Clark University in Massachusetts who studies emerging
adulthood. “For the most part we do what’s expected of us.”

How these norms get set is a combination of social, economic and technological factors. “These
things develop and we’re all aware of them and we all follow them, but nobody determines
them,” says Arnett. “It’s this aggregation of millions of people thinking about things and making
decisions and talking to each other. Nobody’s really in control of it.”

Among these influences, parents and families play a huge role, especially around expectations
for timing around marriage and kids. For instance, most baby boomers in Western societies
generally married in their 20s, bought a house and had kids soon after. Subsequently, they
transferred those expectations and that timeline to their millennial children.

These things develop and we’re all aware of them and we

all follow them, but nobody determines them – Jeffrey
Arnett
But millennials in the US and the UK aren’t hitting those milestones; instead, they’re getting on
married an average of seven years later than their parents, and haven’t married at all. And the
age women first give birth has consistently risen over the past 40 years, so most millennial
women are having children later than their baby boomer parents – waiting until age 29 or older.
Similarly, the homeownership rate for millennials is 8% lower than it was for the preceding two
generations.

That’s because parents aren’t the only factors that influence these milestones, and millennials
were born into a very different world than the one their parents knew, and navigate it in a very
different way.

Millennials are, on average, better educated than previous generations – nearly 40% in the US
have a bachelor’s degree compared to only a quarter of baby boomers. That means they’re
entering the workforce later, so they start saving for homes later, too. “We certainly realise more
and more the importance of education and training,” says Arnett. “That means you’re not likely
to be self-sufficient at 19 or 20.” Debt from financing college, along with rising home costs, also
means that fewer millennials can afford to buy homes.

Most millennial women are having

children later than their baby boomer parents – waiting until age 29 or older

And although expectations that women get married and have kids haven’t changed, ideas about
gender norms have shifted. “There was a lot of pressure on women to find a man and get
married,” says Arnett. “If you didn't, what else were you going to do?” But now it’s much more
common for women to pursue education and careers. Since the mid-1990s, more women have
attended university than men. So, while in 1966, only 40% of women aged 22 to 37 were
employed, in 2020, 72% of millennial women were participating in the workforce.

That interest in education and career has changed when women have kids. A New York times
analysis showed that women with college degrees have children an average of seven years
later than women who don’t go to college, and that education level was a greater factor in
delaying having kids than other factors like home prices.

Advances in science and technology also have had a huge impact on these expectations. Take
the example of birth control, which allowed women to start being sexually active years before
they planned to marry or have children. “That gives people so much more decision-making
power over whether to enter marriage or parenthood,” says Arnett. “That is truly revolutionary.”
Right now, it’s considered fairly normal to start exploring sexuality perhaps a decade before
marriage, something he notes was unprecedented before the latter half of the 20th Century.

But while economic and educational realities have changed drastically, our social expectations
haven’t kept pace. One survey by the US Census Bureau showed that the majority of
Americans believe people should be economically independent by age 21. But the same survey
also found that the majority of the country didn’t think most students would be done with college
until age 22. This contradiction sets people up to fail milestones, even as they work desperately
to achieve them.

‘The tyranny of the should’

Newer generations are feeling the stress. They still feel pressure to live up to their parents’ and
grandparents’ norms, even if those expectations really aren’t relevant anymore. One survey
showed that, on average, adults older than 25 still plan to get married, have kids and buy a
home all before age 30, even though the number of people actually able to do so has decreased
with every generation.

That gap between what recent generations think they ought to be achieving and what is
possible in today’s financial and educational climate is having a massive impact on their mental
health. “In general, greater discrepancies between what people want and what they actually do
reliably predict poorer health and wellbeing,” wrote the survey’s authors. The researchers also
suggest that the increasing inability to reach major life milestones in the timeframe we set for
ourselves may be one explanation for the rise in ‘deaths of despair’, drug overdoses and
suicides caused by vanishing jobs and bleak economic outlook.

People tend to make big, globalised exaggerations like,

“everyone is getting married” or “everyone has more
money than I do” – but that’s not true
Charlotte Housden, an occupational psychologist based in Kent, UK, calls this social pressure
the “tyranny of the should”. She counsels people who are feeling stressed that they are falling
behind to remember that they aren’t alone. Lots of people struggle with the misconception that
they aren’t measuring up to society’s standards. She says people tend to make big, globalised
exaggerations like, “everyone is getting married” or “everyone has more money than I do”. But
that’s not true. “It’s a thinking error,” she says. “Some people have more money. Some people
are getting married.”

And she warns that achieving these goals – either by getting a high paying job or buying a nice
home – won’t necessarily make you happy. "It’s about finding your fit,” she says. Housden
recommends taking a moment to separate what it is that you really want and what it is that you
feel your parents or family expect. “Understand where your drivers are coming from,” she says.
“Is it you that wants to go to college or is it your parents? Is it something you really want?”

Housden emphasises focusing on achievements that make you happy, rather than
achievements that conform to parental or social expectations. But, she acknowledges, that’s
easier said than done.

Buying a house is a major milestone

many strive to reach, but economic factors have made it significantly more difficult for younger
generations to reach the goal

Singh spent much of his mid-20s thinking he had fallen hopelessly behind his friends. But as he
aged, he started to gain more confidence in his own path. “I hadn’t met anybody that I wanted to
start my life with and that was OK,” he says. “I was putting in the work and becoming the person
I wanted to become.” He was lucky to enjoy what he calls “Indian boy privilege”, which gave him
a break from the family pressure to get married. Because many of his friends also pursued
graduate and professional degrees, he didn’t feel self-conscious about being in school for so
long and delaying certain milestones like buying a home or having kids.

But he acknowledges that he wouldn’t feel so confident and laid back now if he hadn’t found his
girlfriend and started getting life to conform to the milestones he’d set. “I think it would be a lot
harder for me to feel satisfied,” he says.

Singh’s path took longer than he expected, but there is evidence that these ideas about when
we should settle down and have kids are starting to change. The US Census survey also
showed that the vast majority of Americans believe that finishing school and getting a job are
important markers of adulthood, more so than getting married or having kids. There’s less
judgement about living with parents for a period of time after college, and more emphasis on
education and financial security. So, while these expectations seemed fixed and finite, the truth
is that they’re changing all the time – even if you may not think so.

I Left QAnon in 2019. But I’m Still Not Free.

Some say the movement is losing its power. But I see the opposite.

Since it became clear that the QAnon conspiracy theory was a driving force in the siege of the
U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Anastasiia Carrier has been interviewing former QAnon believers and
hearing from them, in their own words, how they were drawn into that world and how they got
out. Their stories reveal surprising political implications of a movement that is still thriving
outside mainstream scrutiny.

I left QAnon back in 2019, but I don’t seem to be able to walk away. I talk about my experience a
lot — to the Washington Post, CNN and Rolling Stone magazine among many others. I even
apologized to Anderson Cooper on his show for having once thought that he ate babies.

I’m one of the few former followers willing to go on the record with their story, which means I’m a
source for journalists and researchers and sometimes also a guide for former believers who
want to talk to someone who understands what they went through. I’m also one of the senior
moderators of the QAnonCasualties forum on Reddit, a message board for family members of
QAnon believers. I might have left, but I still have a close look into how the conspiracy theory is
spreading and affecting people.

These days, QAnon isn’t getting the headlines it was after Jan. 6. I guess most of the world
doesn’t pay attention to QAnon anymore unless its followers do something especially bizarre,
like the recent gathering in Dallas where hundreds met in hopes of seeing John F. Kennedy Jr.
alive. But from where I stand I don’t see QAnon fading away — I see it getting stronger.

I was sucked into QAnon in the winter of 2017. At the time, I casually followed various
conspiracies online and the internet led me to Q. I was living in Australia, where I still live, but I
had been interested in American politics since spending six months in the U.S. a few years
before. I had rooted for Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primary and felt let down when he lost.

When I found QAnon, I didn’t just flirt with it — I fell deep. I internalized the idea that the world
was run by the Cabal, a Satan-worshiping child-molesting group of liberal politicians, Hollywood
moguls, billionaires and other influential elites. I believed that Donald Trump was leading the
fight against the Cabal and that there was a plan in place to defeat them. I couldn’t wait for the
coming of the Storm, QAnon’s version of judgment day that would herald the announcement of
martial law and a wave of public executions. I was looking forward to the execution of Hillary
Clinton, whom Q portrayed as a pedophile and a murderer. I would have cheered. QAnon
showed me that I can be enthusiastic about violence, and it’s hard to forgive myself for that.

I understood QAnon was a lie on June 13, 2019. Just minutes after I wrote a post online laden
with QAnon conspiracies, I watched a YouTube video that reviewed the times that Trump used
the phrase “tippy top” throughout the years. Q said that when Trump said this phrase, he was
signaling to Anons, “the patriots,” that everything was going according to the plan in the fight
with the Deep State. But the video showed that Trump had always used this phrase a lot, long
before he ever ran for the presidency and Q came to be. That’s when it clicked for me: This was
all a lie.
I walked out onto the porch of my house in Sydney, Australia, smoked a cigarette and took in
the idea that I had lost two years of my life to a vile conspiracy crafted by a psychopath. I had
even introduced my dad to it. He is still a follower; I can’t get through to him.

Then I went inside, sat down and wrote a different post, this time on a Reddit forum devoted to
debunking the conspiracy. I titled the post: You guys were right.

The pain and shame that came with the disillusionment were overwhelming. I couldn’t look
people in the eyes. I felt like I had committed a violent crime and was running for my life. I was
terrified that someone would find out my secret and my life would be ruined forever. I lived with
this fear for a year. During that time, I didn’t speak about QAnon or read anything about
American politics because it reminded of my time in Q’s thrall.

There was only one way I reexposed myself to QAnon during that time: I reread comments on
the Reddit post I had written the hour I quit. The kind words of strangers saying that it wasn’t my
fault and that I was brave for getting out made me feel better. It was through that post that a
journalist found me in June 2020 and I got my first interview request. The only thing the
journalist asked was for me to tell my story.

“The only thing?” I thought. There was no such thing as just telling my story. I asked everyone in
my life who knew about my time with QAnon if I should talk to the reporter. Every single one of
them tried to talk me out of it.

And yet, the general public was just becoming aware of QAnon and was underestimating the
real-world danger the online conspiracy could cause. I thought people should know more. I also
wanted to be able to reach those who were on the edge of falling for QAnon or leaving it. I
thought that going public about my experience might provide them with the nudge that would
help them escape the lie. I also didn’t see the point of doing it halfway — if I wanted Anons to
take me seriously, I needed to put my name on the record.

I also felt physically safer speaking up in Australia than I would have if I lived in the U.S. I knew
Anons could be violent (someone later posted my address and a photo of my house online) and
I found comfort in knowing that most QAnon followers seem to live in the U.S. and that it would
take an expensive plane ticket and a very long flight for anyone to get to me. Australia also has
stricter gun laws, so I didn’t need to worry that someone could show up armed.

“Whatever. I’ll do it. Life is too short. Who cares?” I thought. And after ignoring the interview
request for a month, I responded and said I’d do it.

I was very nervous during my first interview, but it felt great to get my experience out. Even
before that story published, more interview requests came in, and I accepted them all. One after
another, these interviews drained me of my shame. Now I tell all former Anons to share their
stories — it’s cathartic. For so long, my biggest fear had been that someone would find out I had
followed Q. By telling the whole world about it, I removed all the power that shame had over me.
I still feel guilty for my beliefs, but I’m not scared or ashamed anymore.
Over the past year, I’ve spoken with many journalists, researchers and family members of those
who fell for QAnon. No one has told me that my story has helped them escape QAnon, but I do
speak with current Anons surprisingly often. Usually, they reach out to mock or confront me, but
I almost always manage to turn it into a real conversation. I know how to speak to them because
I used to be one of them — I don’t demean them but neither do I let them get away with
rambling and bogus reasoning. These conversations are very draining — they can last 12 hours
and require writing long essays, addressing their arguments point by point. The trick is to not let
them walk over you and to push back on their beliefs without insulting their intelligence. And if
it’s someone you care for, you can try to ask them why being right is more important to them
than having a functioning relationship with you.

A few months ago, I livestreamed a QAnon conference in Dallas. Attendees didn’t refer to their
movement as QAnon, but all the elements were there — the ideas, the slogans and the current
“celebrities” of the conspiracy movement. I wanted to be there to talk to them. Why? Going from
a Bernie Sanders supporter to a Trump supporter to being politically homeless left me with a lot
of unfinished emotional and intellectual business with both the right and the left. I’ve sorted
through all my unfinished business with the left by talking with the media. I think most media
leans left, but I also saw how journalism works and how carefully I was vetted before my story
was considered credible. But I still feel angry and betrayed by the right. The intellectual right has
a lot of great ideas but they abandoned them all to stand by Trump and his claims about election
fraud. What went wrong? I would have talked to the Dallas attendees about that.

Even though I wasn’t there, one thing that surprised me about that Dallas conference was how
polished and well put together it was on a professional level. It tells me that the movement’s
infrastructure is improving and it is growing. I disagree with people who say that QAnon is fading
away — I think its believers are growing as fast as the fandom of “Game of Thrones” when it
came out. Their content might be banned from popular social media but I think they are still
there, flourishing away from the eyes of polite society.

This worries me. I believe QAnon has a lot in common with doomsday cults and in the past,
doomsday cults turned violent. I was not surprised when the FBI said that “digital soldiers” could
turn to violence, nor was I surprised by the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. I think it’s
inevitable that more real-world violence will occur in future. Eventually, Anons will get tired of
waiting for the Storm. Then, they will take the bringing of the martial law into their own hands.

I don’t see a natural end point to this conspiracy now. It has survived Q’s disappearance and
Trump’s 2020 loss, which, according to the theory, was never supposed to happen. The
movement is changing, though. QAnon has always been a blanket conspiracy that allowed
people to bring what conspiratorial beliefs they wanted into it. Now, without Trump in the White
House and Q trying to directs its flow, this inclusiveness has become more pronounced. What is
left is a more decentralized movement, with an ever growing range of beliefs, united by a shared
culture of distrust toward institutions and a do-it-yourself approach to conspiracy theories.

My biggest dream now is seeing other former QAnon followers go on the record with their
experience so I can fade away into obscurity and bum around. I had a life before this and I want
to go back to it. But no one is willing to take these responsibilities from me. Once a reporter told
me that maybe no one speaks up because I’m already doing it. Maybe so. But I don’t want to be
doing this forever.

Lördagsgodis: Sweden’s
Saturday-only candy tradition
Swedish children look forward to the weekend for their once-weekly candy fix. But beyond being
a treat, these Saturday sweets teach a bigger lesson.

On a Saturday afternoon, the cobblestones of Stockholm’s Liljeholmen square are abuzz with
families weaving in and out of the local shopping mall. Look closely, and you’ll spot children
tightly clutching a perennial weekly accessory: a bag of loose pick-and-mix.

Swedes are so into the norm of buying and eating candy on Saturdays they’ve even got a
special word for it: lördagsgodis, which literally translates to ‘Saturday sweets’.

“Lördagsgodis has always been ‘a thing’,” says Robert Lundin, who grew up in the 80s and has
just bought marshmallows with his five-year-old daughter. “You wait for Saturday to get your
candy. And it's like a small, big event with your parents. And now I do it with my daughter as
well.”

The lördagsgodis concept dates to the 1950s. Swedish medical authorities began
recommending sweets as a once-a-week treat, to try and limit rising cases of tooth decay as the
country became richer, says Sofi Tegsveden Deveaux, an author and lecturer on Swedish
culture and values. Swedes’ propensity to “trust the state a lot” encouraged them to follow and
stick to the advice to restrict eating sweets to Saturdays, she argues, with the trend evolving into
the beloved family-oriented activity that exists today.

“The kids like it, and kids need some good things for themselves,” says Hui Jiang, 34. She
moved to Sweden from China a decade ago, and has adopted the tradition with her children,
who begin jumping up and down the moment lördagsgodis is mentioned.
 On Saturdays in Sweden, families head
into sweets shops and load up on their once-weekly penny candy treats

This penny candy is a sweet treat for anyone looking to unwind from the week. But cultural
commentators and economists alike argue there’s a lot more to be learned from the
lördagsgodis tradition – particularly, it encourages children to start thinking about weekly
budgeting, and feeds into a culture that champions independence from a young age.​​

“My children got their bank cards when they were six years old, and every week I deposit 20
kronor into them. Then they go to the store every Saturday and count out sweets into a bag,”
says Tegsveden Deveaux, who has seven-year-old twins. “They have to budget for their
Saturday candy, and if they want to buy toys or something else that they do not ‘need’,” she
explains. In her local store, 20 kronor can buy up to 40 loose pick-and-mix. Her daughter tends
to come home with a bulging bag, while her son chooses to buy fewer and lighter sweets so he
has more money left in his account.

Promoting financial freedom

While fizzy cola bottles, red jelly lips or salted liquorice might initially seem unlikely symbols of
financial freedom, Tegsveden Deveaux says her family is far from alone when it comes to using
these lördagsgodis staples as an early lesson in money management. Penny sweets are
typically among the first items children regularly spend money on if they’re given weekly pocket
money, she says, which has been commonplace in Sweden since the 1960s.

Around seven out of 10 Swedish children currently get a weekly or monthly allowance,
according to 2020 data shared by Swedbank, one of the country’s high-street banks. Six out of
10 parents surveyed said they and their children had some form of agreement about what their
money should be used for.
 Robert Lundin celebrated the lördagsgodis tradition
while growing up in the 80s, and now does it with his own daughter

Americo Fernández, a household economist and personal-finance podcaster for SEB, another
major Nordic bank chain, agrees the lördagsgodis tradition is “definitely” a useful tool in helping
Swedish children to understand the value of money.

“It's difficult to talk to an eight-year-old small person and try to explain to them the importance of
saving,” he argues. By contrast, giving children money to put aside for weekly sweets or other
small luxuries can teach them about basic financial planning. “It's [easier] to understand that if I
give you 20 kronor, if you spend it now, you won't have any more during the rest of the month,
for example, or the week.”

Swedbank’s research suggests the average weekly pocket money for a seven-year-old in
Sweden is 20 kronor ($2.30, £1.70). This rises to 500 kronor a month at the age of 15, when it
becomes more common for children to put this towards clothes or activities with friends, such as
meals out or going to the movies. There’s strong evidence that encouraging financial
responsibility from a young age is connected to healthy saving habits: more than seven out of
10 parents surveyed by Swedbank said their children were either sometimes or always able to
save part of their allowance.

“Most Swedish parents increase the weekly or monthly allowance gradually, but with each
increase, the children are responsible for one more thing that they must buy themselves,”
explains Tegsveden Deveaux.
 20 kronor ($2.30, £1.70) can buy up to 40
loose pick-and-mix in some stores

The role of the state

Americo Fernández believes parents in other countries could learn a lot from Swedes’ tendency
to talk about budgeting and personal finances with children from a young age, at a time when
household debt is rocketing around the world. But he says it’s important to put Swedes’
spending habits in the context of the country’s long history of social welfare and a culture that
promotes individualism and independence at all ages.

Education is free and healthcare is state subsidised in Sweden, which can help reduce families’
financial pressures. Plus, all parents, regardless of income, are entitled to a monthly child
benefit of 1,250 kronor ($144, £105) a month, until their child turns 16. This, explains
Fernández, “gives practically everyone the possibility to either save for their children or give
them a weekly or monthly allowance” in a way that simply isn’t possible in many other societies.

When Swedish children turn 16, the state stops paying child benefit to their parents and starts
giving them the same amount directly as a form of study grant, as long as they remain in
education. “So, the idea with the weekly or monthly allowance is you're slowly building up
towards that [study] sum,” adds Tegsveden Deveaux. “It's quite a smooth transition from being
given money from their parents to being given money by the state.”

At Liljeholmen’s shopping complex, 35-year-old Fanny Hökby vividly recalls that she “wasn’t
very good” at saving her first pocket money, which she mostly spent on lördagsgodis and toys.
But by the age of 16 she’d figured out how to use her study grant to budget for clothes, gifts and
outings with friends, and she agrees that a monthly allowance can be an educational tool for
children and young people.

Tegsveden Deveaux says many Swedish parents believe giving children pocket money from a
young age also helps prepare them for budgeting with further education student grants and
loans if they continue studying, or spending their first salaries after high school. Swedes
typically leave their family home at the age of just 18 or 19, earlier than most Europeans.

“Young Swedes ...They have to take care of themselves pretty fast, even though they get a lot of
subsidies from the state and student loans,” agrees Fernández. “That's a huge difference [to
some countries]. For example, when I studied abroad in Spain, if I compare it with that, I saw a
lot of my peers still living at home, still being supported by their parents, and still after university,
still living at home.”

The future of lördagsgodis

Whether children are taught to budget using coins and notes or bank transfers and apps, there’s
little debate in Sweden about whether or not the lördagsgodis trend will continue – even as
Sweden moves increasingly toward a cashless society and digital wallets.

“I think that the tradition will continue of children spending their first allowances on candy… I
don't see that changing,” argues Fernández.

However, he points out it’s becoming more common to indulge in the likes of fizzy snakes or
foam bananas on weeknights, too, with national data suggesting the consumption of chocolate
and confectionery has been rising steadily in recent years. “People may be starting to eat more
[sweets] during the week, but they will still not let go of the traditional lördagsgodis,” agrees
Deveaux. “It’s really deeply ingrained.”

On Liljeholmen’s cobbles, 38-year-old Hanna Sjöberg is rushing back from the shops to catch
the tram with her partner and their eight-year-old daughter. But she responds in a flash when
asked whether her family embraces lördagsgodis on a weekly basis. “Yeah. Otherwise there
would be lots of tears!”

The way we view free time is making us

less happy
Some people try to make every hour of leisure perfect, while others hate taking time off
altogether. Have we forgotten how to enjoy free time?

Leisure is the prize, right? We work hard, so we want to play hard; we look forward to our time
off, believing that the more leisure time we have, the better life will be. Enjoying that time – or
savouring that coveted end goal – should come naturally.

However, research shows that both having and deciding how to spend leisure time can be very
stressful. Some people feel enormous pressure to maximise their downtime with the best
choices: researching more, anticipating and spending more money. But, as data prove, this
pressure to maximise our fun might get in the way of our enjoyment of leisure itself.
Additionally, some people struggle to view leisure as worthwhile at all. These individuals – often
in high-stress, high-paying jobs – prioritise productivity to the extent that they can’t enjoy time
off, often to the detriment of their mental health.

However different their problems with leisure, both groups struggle with enjoying time off for the
same reason: the way we perceive and value leisure has changed, problematically.
Understanding this evolution, and finding ways to change our attitudes, could be beneficial for
everyone – and help people to start enjoying themselves again.

The changing concept of leisure

“Leisure has dramatically evolved over the centuries and across cultures,” says Brad Aeon,
assistant professor at the School of Management Sciences at the University of Québec in
Montréal. “One thing that’s consistent about leisure, however, is that it has always been
contrasted with work.”

Two-thousand years ago, concepts of work and leisure were associated with servitude and
freedom, respectively. In Ancient Greece, explains Aeon, most of the labour was outsourced to
slaves, while wealthier parts of society pursued other activities. “Leisure was an active state of
mind. Good leisure meant playing sports, learning music theory, debating qualified peers and
doing philosophy. Leisure was not easy, but it was supposed to be gratifying.”

Today we’re seeing yet another transition: a lack

of leisure time now operates as a powerful status
symbol
Aeon believes that a shift occurred when the Romans started viewing leisure as a way of
recuperating in preparation for more work, a transition that accelerated significantly during the
Industrial Revolution. By the 1800s, the kind of leisure that signified status had shifted, too; the
wealthy led overtly idle lives. A popular example is philosopher Walter Benjamin’s description of
the fashion, around 1893, to walk through arcades with a turtle on a leash.

Anat Keinan, associate professor of marketing at Boston University’s Questrom School of

Business, has conducted extensive research on the symbolic value of time. She explains today
we’re seeing yet another transition: a lack of leisure time now operates as a powerful status
symbol. “On Twitter, celebrities ‘humblebrag’ about ‘having no life’ and ‘being in desperate need
of a vacation’,” she points out. In the workplace, being part of the long-hours working culture is
still seen by many as a badge of honour.

In fact, those with the most money to spend on leisure are most likely also putting in the longest
hours. “Highly educated people (think surgeons, lawyers, CEOs) often go for well-paid jobs that
require highly productive candidates willing to work long hours,” explains Aeon. “This means
that those who complain the most about not having enough free time are wealthy and
educated.” That fuels the idea that we must maximise leisure’s ‘hedonic utility’, or enjoyment
value, when we actually do get some time off – and make every hour count.

The leisure maximisers

Economists call the idea that we must maximise our time off the intensification of the value of
our leisure time. In his book, Spending time: The Most Valuable Resource, US economist Daniel
Hamermesh explains that “our ability to purchase and enjoy goods and services has risen much
more rapidly than the amount of time available for us to enjoy them”. This pressure manifests in
our decisions. “We feel like we want to have the best bang for our buck and minutes,” explains
Aeon, “So we invest more money in leisure. Better hotels, better movie experiences – like IMAX
or Netflix in 4K – better everything.”

For some people, leisure has come to represent

collectible experiences that convey status, often on social media

All this can lead to hours poring over reviews diligently planning leisure activities. That might not
necessarily be a bad thing, researchers have found, as pre-trip anticipation greatly accounts for
vacationers' happiness. But too much anticipation might set us up for a seemingly zero-duration
holiday. New research shows that we judge future positive events as both farther away and
shorter than negative or neutral ones, leading us to feel like a holiday is over as soon as it
begins.

Equally, the way we chase top-notch leisure experiences has made recreation more stressful
than ever. High expectations may clash with our experienced reality, making it feel anti-climactic,
while trying to concoct the best vacation or leisure experience ever can fuel performativity.

In her 2011 research paper, Keinan first posited that some consumers work to acquire
collectable experiences that are unusual, novel or extreme because it helps us reframe our
leisure as being productive. By working through our experiential checklist instead of seeking
simply to enjoy the moment, she writes, we build our “experiential CV”.

And just like a traditional resume, where we show off our best selves, this experiential CV can
become a breeding ground for competition. Keinan believes social media exacerbates our focus
on productive leisure. Referencing a 2021 research paper, she suggests people are pivoting to
signal their status and accomplishments in alternative domains – in this case, the use of their
free time.
“Users post carefully curated slide shows of themselves crossing marathon finish lines and
climbing Machu Picchu. Conspicuous consumption used to be a wayfor people to display their
money through scarce luxury goods. Now, they flaunt how they spend their valuable time only
on activities that are truly meaningful, productive or spectacular,” she says.

The people who hate leisure

Some struggle to enjoy leisure at all. Some try to ‘hack’ leisure by applying productivity
techniques, says Aeon, like listening to a podcast while jogging or watching Netflix shows at
twice the regular speed. Others may not truly take time off at all. For example, only 14% of
Americans take two weeks' vacation in a row, a finding in keeping with the overwork culture.
The same study reports that as of 2017, 54% of American workers didn’t use up their vacation
time, leaving 662 million days reserved for leisure unused.

Part of the problem, new research shows, is how comprehensively we internalise the message
that leisure is wasteful. Selin A Malkoc, associate professor of marketing at the Fisher College
of Business at The Ohio State University and co-author of the study, says certain people
perceive leisure as lacking value, even when it doesn’t interfere with their pursuit of goals.
These negative beliefs about leisure are associated with lower reported happiness and greater
reported depression, anxiety and stress.

Certain people perceive leisure as lacking value,

even when it doesn’t interfere with their pursuit of
goals
Malkoc describes two types of leisure: ‘terminal leisure’, where the activity and the goal are
‘fused’ together, like attending a Halloween party just for fun, is immediately rewarding and an
end goal in itself; and ‘instrumental leisure’, like taking a child trick-or-treating and thereby
‘checking off’ parental duties, which is a means to an end and feeds a long-term goal. The
ability to enjoy terminal leisure is a stronger predictor of wellbeing than enjoyment of
instrumental leisure, the study showed.

In one of the study’s experiments, Malkoc and her co-authors wanted to see if they could
manipulate participants’ beliefs about leisure and get them to enjoy it more. Each group was
presented with a different version of an article that framed their understanding of leisure, either
as wasteful in terms of goal-achievement, unproductive or as a productive way of managing
stress. Participants were then asked to evaluate how well-written the article was.

But researchers were more interested in what came afterwards. They offered participants a
break and gave them a funny cat video to watch to see how much they enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, priming our beliefs about leisure only works in one direction, the researchers
found – the wrong one. Those who read the articles framing leisure as wasteful enjoyed the
experience 11% to 14% less than the baseline (the control group, who read about coffee
makers), while those cued to believe it is productive did not experience bolstered enjoyment
levels. In other words, trying to prime participants’ receptivity towards enjoying leisure more was
about as effective as having them read about coffee, suggesting that our attitudes are deeply
entrenched.

It’s a sobering finding. “We had this group of undergraduate students in the lab doing a series of
mostly mind-numbingly boring studies – there’s nothing enjoyable about it,” says Malkoc, “And
then, we offer them a mental break to watch a fun video. The fact that even though they couldn’t
use those brief moments for something better, they still couldn’t enjoy themselves... attests to
the strength of their belief.”

The view that leisure is wasteful can

be deeply entrenched – meaning some people really struggle to enjoy time off

Malkoc also compared samples from different nations. Participants from India and America, both
nations with overwork cultures, endorsed the belief that leisure is wasteful more strongly than
participants from France, which has social norms, “less restrictive of enjoying life and having
fun”. In fact, while Malkoc estimates about 30% of the population endorses the ‘leisure is
wasteful’ belief on average, this varies greatly across cultures, going as high as 55% in the
Indian subsample and as low as 15% in the French sample, she explains.

Hope for leisure intensifiers and avoiders

Fortunately, there are ways to help both groups. The first, regardless of which end of the
spectrum you fall on, is to relax the productivity mindset. Keinan says a way to do this is by
“assuming a broader perspective on life and anticipating your long-term regrets, as it allows
people to enjoy the present more”.

For those seeking to intensify leisure, Aeon recommends using the peak-end rule, a cognitive
bias that influences the way we remember events. For example, he says, at the dentist’s office,
we remember the peak (when the pain was at its worst) and the end (the candy we’d get as we
left); the average sum of these experiences adjusts the emotional intensity. So, for holidays, he
recommends doing one thing that’s “completely insane” in the middle, such as bungee jumping,
and one equally grandiose thing at the end (for instance, a spa day or indulgent meal) to elevate
the entire experience and maximise hedonic utility overall.
He recommends using mindfulness to help savour leisure experiences. “It expands your
subjective perception of time (i.e., you feel like you have more of it) and enhances memory
formation, which means you’ll not only feel like your vacations lasted longer, but you’ll
remember them a lot better.” And in keeping with research on anticipation, having multiple
smaller vacations to look forward to rather than one massive one could also maximise our
enjoyment value.

For those who find it hard to take time off to begin with, Keinan suggests using a functional alibi
– a practical excuse for enjoying themselves. “Having a ‘functional alibi’ that articulates a
purpose for an activity (such as the health and productivity benefits of taking a much-needed
vacation) allows many consumers to relax without feeling guilty,” she says.

The only ‘right’ way to do leisure is to relax, let

your guard down, make good memories
Combating the ‘leisure is wasteful’ mindset might also mean emphasising the value of an
activity by aligning it with another utilitarian goal, instead of trying to reframe leisure as a
concept. “Vacations are meant to be ‘terminal’, but we can have different goals embedded within
them,” says Malkoc. A trip to Disneyland, for example, might have terminal value for the
children, and offer instrumental leisure for the parents. “Making them understand… that this is a
way to get productive or fuel another purpose might help them let their guard down and enjoy it
a little bit more.”

Enjoying leisure might even be a learned response, similar to the way we build up stamina
gradually at the gym. Smaller vacations – a 30-hour getaway at a hotel – might be just short
enough for such individuals to leave responsibilities behind. For longer trips, Malkoc suggests
allowing driven individuals to work for a short window once a day might actually be less stressful
than asking them to unplug completely.

For both groups – and even those somewhere in the middle – the persistent fear that we are not
using our time ‘right’, whether by having an extravagantly ‘collectable’ experience or just being
uber productive, can derail the very purpose of leisure. Because the only ‘right’ way to do leisure
is to relax, let your guard down, make good memories and trust the pieces will fall into place.

“If you approach a vacation with a ‘should’ mindset, you might be messing it up,” warns Malkoc.
“Don’t let your belief that you ‘need to get the best out of this’ get the best of you.”