One in six people living in the UK admitted they struggle to tell the time unless it’s on a digital clock.
Some 16% out of 2,000 people asked in a survey said it often took them several seconds to read a traditional analogue clock.
They said they have to look at the ‘big hand’ and ‘small hand’ to ‘figure it out’.
Younger people were those who struggled the most, with 21% in Gen Z – between age 18 and 24 – saying they found telling the time a problem.
It becomes less of an issue in older age groups, with 19% of Millennials – aged 25 to 35 – struggling.
Those between 35 and 44 came in at 15%, ages 45 to 54 said 13%, and only 12% people aged 55 and over struggle.
The study further found people struggled with many different kinds of everyday tasks, such as ironing clothes, putting together flatpack furniture and changing a duvet cover.
The demand is so high one man even recently quit his job as a delivery driver to become a flatpack furniture assembler full-time on £35,000.
Phil Hollis, of Harrow in north-west London, admitted he’d never really paid attention to a ‘normal watch’.
The 23-year-old said: ‘I’ve had a mobile phone since I was 11 and I’ve never owned a watch, so telling the time on a watch or clock takes me a while.
‘When I go to my gran’s and see all the clocks on the wall and mantlepiece they all seem to showing the wrong time anyway, so why bother learning how?’
A spokesperson for clearitwaste.co.uk, a waste collection firm which carried out the survey, said: ‘Assembling flatpack furniture topped the list with 68% saying they don’t know how to do it.
‘We also found thy 16% of those polled struggled with telling the time on an analogue clock or watch.’
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