A Decade – How our date night has changed

It honestly doesn’t seem that long ago when I would be putting on my dancing shoes for a weekend of late nights, drinking, dancing and returning home the following morning to prepare myself for work and repeat the whole drunken saga all over again the next night. I lived for the weekend and nights out with my friends were often filled with drunken antics and unbelievable hangovers.

A lot has changed over the past 10 years; nowadays my weekends are spent constructing skyscrapers out of building blocks,  copious amounts of play-doh and tea parties with an array of stuffed toys. We have lazy Sundays where we bake cakes and watch Simon’s Cat on YouTube in our pyjamas. I like being able to relax after a busy week, I’m far to exhausted to even contemplate the idea of the hustle and bustle of the City Centre on a night out. Compared to those drunken nights out with the Mr drinking shots and cocktails, I much prefer a bottle of wine and a meal with the Mr, putting our feet up and a film or two on Netflix.

In fact with the use of the internet we don’t even need to leave the house at all at the weekends unless we really needed to. Everything could be done from the comfort of our own home. Shopping online for delivery the next day, ordering takeaway meals online to be  brought to your door, watch movies online or catching up with TV shows, playing bingo or other games, I can even manage my music playlists to suit my mood online. It all sounds really lazy but after a really busy week, that’s what we want, time to unwind and enjoy with our little girl. It’s not just me, more people now are using the internet to their advantage, like 85.6%* of people surveyed admitted to using the internet to catch up on the news. I don’t blame them, I’d rather stay indoors and  catch up on the news by visiting news websites instead of going out to the paper shop in the cold wet rain on a Sunday morning. More and more people are using social media to their advantage to keep up with friends and family, organise events and even remind you of birthdays. The increase in smart phones is allowing us to utilise the internet even while we sit and watch our favourite soaps.

I hung up my dancing shoes a while a go and my weekends nights are now a lot tamer. I might still see dawn on a Saturday morning but I wouldn’t change my weekend breakfasts watching Peppa Pig with the little one for the world.

*Data collected from an online habits survey of 1000 UK adults

This post was written in collaboration with Ladbrokes Bingo