Time Use Week 2025 closes out its eleventh edition by reaffirming the role of time policies as a key tool for ensuring well-being and equality in the digital age.
The eleventh edition of Time Use Week (TUW 2025) concluded with a clear message: the tech revolution must go hand in hand with a revolution in how we organise time. With the theme “The Right to Time in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”, the week opened up a conversation on how to ensure that digital progress leads to more free time, not more rushing around and greater inequalities.
Over three days, participants and 30 speakers from around the world reflected on the impacts of AI on time use in the fields of work, caregiving, health and democracy, and agreed that technology can free up time, but only if it is applied with social and ethical criteria.
Time Use Week 2025 was organised by the Government of Catalonia, Barcelona City Council, Barcelona Provincial Council, the Barcelona Metropolitan Area and the Time Use Initiative (TUI).
The ten key takeaways from TUW 2025 are as follows:
- Reducing time distress and time poverty should be one of the priorities in the age of AI, but this isn’t yet the case. The figures presented show that time stress affects about 80% of the population and that time poverty continues to affect 32% of women and 25% of men in Barcelona.
- AI must do more than strive for efficiency. All the experts agree that seeking efficiency cannot be the main criterion for using AI.
- One area where AI is already transforming time use in cities is mobility, as seen in the case of Istanbul. During TUW 2025, speakers also emphasised that tools such as digital twins must include time use in order to test time policies.
- AI should do the tasks that we humans don’t want to spend time on. One key theme was that it should focus on repetitive tasks so we can devote more time to creative ones.
- AI does not exponentially increase business productivity. Many experts share the view that, at present, generative AI can’t fully replace human work, but it can transform this work: people are now being hired to correct errors or bring a human touch to what machines create.
- In the digital era, regulation and collective bargaining are key elements in organising working time.
- The current digital acceleration is challenging the timing and pace of democratic processes.
- Time policies work and improve our lives.
- We need to recognise the value of slowing down, and put it into practice in our fast-paced world. Experts argue that we must adopt digital diets in order to tackle this society-wide exhaustion and prevent mobile phones and apps from becoming time thieves.
- Sant Boi de Llobregat was chosen as the World Capital of Time Policies for 2026.
TUW 2025 also presented a series of time policy resources for local governments in Catalonia and time-use research teams.
Further information: https://timeuse.barcelona/time-use-week-2025/