Spending Leisure Time Shopping In The Mall example essay topic

The television is now a part of every home. Years ago, a television in the living room was considered a luxury; today a house without a TV is rare. The television is part of our everyday lives. Many people do not realize how much time they spend watching TV. Young kids watch hours of TV after school, and adults watch after work.

They want to catch their favorite program or movie, and when they know that they will not be able to, they set the VCR to record it so they can watch it later. Many people find time to every day to watch TV, no matter how busy their schedules are. Although TV may become unhealthy if too much time is spent watching it, it does provide a means for relaxation. People just need to be careful about how much time they spend relaxing. For most people, there is a lot of time spent watching TV, playing video games, and surfing the net, but there are many others who cannot find time for these activities. Many people have schedules that are too busy to let them find time for themselves.

Most of the day is spent working or going to school and the rest if the day is spent running errands. People in America today are working harder than ever. They are leaving their selves very little time for rest and relaxation. Years ago, a forty-hour workweek was unheard of. Today working forty hours in a week is minimal. Many people work twelve to sixteen hour days, five or six days a week.

This leaves very little time to do anything else. When these people are not working, they are doing other things like going shopping or handling their finances. Working like this, leaving no time for rest can be rewarding in some cases, but most of the time it is not. As we have seen, most of Americans prefer to spend their leisure time at home. However, the situation was different some 20 years ago. Americans no longer rank shopping as a fun pastime, as they did in the 80's.

However, yet for all its popularity, the shopping mania provokes considerable disease: many Americans worry about their preoccupation with getting and spending. They fear we are losing touch with more worthwhile values and ways of living. However, the discomfort rarely goes much further than that; it never coheres into a persuasive, well-articulated critique of consumerism. By contrast, in the 1960's and early '70's, a far-reaching critique of consumer culture was a part of our political discourse. As recent research markedly demonstrates, consumers now attempt to limit the time they spend shopping. Time-pressed by family and work, they spend less time cruising the mall in search of the perfect item, but rather look to get what they need as quickly as possible.

This trend has been labeled precision shopping. The situation with shopping is different in Hong Kong. People enjoy shopping there more than spending time at home. The evidence is that the average age of people who spend their leisure time shopping the mall is higher of that of the United States. Besides, people in Hong Kong prefer shopping together with friends. An all-American invention, the shopping center has today revolutionized the global face of retail and entertainment, having the same impact on the worlds cities that another American invention the skyscraper has.

Hong Kong, where Mountain Plaza mall is extremely popular, is the vivid example. Over the past couple decades, spending time in the mall has become a national pastime, not just for teenagers, but people of all ages. They come to enjoy the all-weather; one-stop shopping, dining and entertainment experience that only a mall can deliver. A major icon of a past retail generation, the American department store, has only survived as a part, an appendage, of a mall.