Entertainment is not a luxury — it is essential

In an age of rising urban stress and anxiety, access to meaningful entertainment is a public health and social necessity

By Gift Teresa

Entertainment is routinely dismissed as trivial — a distraction from more serious concerns. That framing is wrong, and the evidence of daily life across Kenya’s cities makes the case plainly. In an era of economic pressure, urban congestion and widespread anxiety, the ability to switch off, laugh, connect and create is not indulgence. It is necessity.

The forms entertainment takes are as varied as the people who seek it. Television remains a fixture in most homes, delivering news, drama and cultural programming. Music — from the first song of the morning — sets a mental tone that carries through the day. Streaming platforms, YouTube, and social media have expanded access dramatically, putting a vast range of content within reach of anyone with a smartphone. Reading, often overlooked in this conversation, sharpens vocabulary, broadens perspective and delivers sustained mental engagement that passive viewing cannot replicate.

The social and economic dimensions are equally significant. Shared entertainment — a film, a concert, a live match — creates the conditions for human connection that urban isolation increasingly erodes. Beyond the audience, the entertainment industry sustains livelihoods for musicians, actors, writers, producers and the broader creative economy that supports them.

The argument that entertainment is a luxury belongs to another era. Stress that goes unrelieved damages health, productivity and relationships. A society that creates no space for joy, rest and creative expression will eventually pay for that omission in ways far more costly than a cinema ticket.

Entertainment is not escapism. It is infrastructure.

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