It turns out we aren’t just bowling alone — we’re bowling at home.
A recent analysis of census data found that Americans are spending more time at home, and a large part of it alone. The analysis, based on responses to the American Time Use Survey, shows that time spent at home increased by 1 hour 39 minutes a day, or 10 percent, from 2003 through 2022. It’s a trend that rose sharply during the pandemic and had yet to return to more typical levels by 2022 — a sign that the pandemic may have hastened a cultural shift already in progress.
Years before the first stay-at-home orders were enacted, Americans were already beginning to spend more time at home. “It’s a dramatic shift in our daily lives,” said Patrick Sharkey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton, and the author of the study. “Almost every part of our lives is more likely to take place at home.”
The rise in working at home during the pandemic has been a big chunk of that, taking up 29 percent of all work activity in 2022. But even before then, from 2003 to 2019, the share of work time at home had crept up to 17 percent from 13 percent. Other activities followed a similar track — a gradual rise over years followed by a spike during the pandemic that was still felt sharply in the first two months of 2022.
As of 2022, time that Americans had once spent outside the home participating in activities like education, eating and drinking, had, to some extent, moved into the home. The largest shift occurred with religious activities: 59 percent occurred at home in 2022, up from 24 percent in 2003.
It’s a trend that the political scientist Robert D. Putnam examined in his influential 2000 book, “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” which said Americans had traded their social institutions — churches, social clubs and, yes, bowling leagues — for social isolation, with adverse consequences for society.
Two decades later, Americans seem to be ceding even more social spaces in their inward turn. The Time Use study found that while people were spending somewhat more time with family at home, much more of the time at home was alone. For each additional hour spent at home, people spent an additional 7.4 minutes with family and 21 minutes alone, but five fewer minutes with friends.
Those ages 15 to 34 have had the greatest increase in time at home, spending roughly two more hours there on a typical day in 2022 compared with 2003.
The findings echo what other researchers have uncovered — that today’s youth are more socially isolated than previous generations, in part because of the arrival of technology that enabled people to live more of their lives online. A 2020 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found increases in loneliness among young people during the pandemic, and a 2021 study of questionnaires of young people found that loneliness had been rising over the last four decades.
Last year, the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, released a health advisory on the rise of loneliness and social isolation, describing it as an epidemic with grave health consequences: Loneliness increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and depression, and it raises the chance of premature death.
“We’re a social species; loneliness is often felt as a deep pain and has very stark health implications,” said Ashton M. Verdery, a professor of sociology, demography and social data analytics at Penn State. “Both for individuals and for society it’s bad.” A 2022 study of data from the Netherlands found that loneliness was a predictor of a person’s sense of interpersonal connectedness and trust.
Being alone is not the same thing as being lonely — people can feel lonely in social settings, or be perfectly content at home with a book. The rise in work-from-home culture has made it easier to juggle work and family, particularly for women, and the pandemic gave people permission to avoid unfulfilling social obligations. Research has also shown that solitude helps people regulate their moods and relax.
While loneliness isn’t the same as being alone, time spent at home in the U.S. has been rising in parallel with social isolation and loneliness. We’re not trading dining at a restaurant for hosting people for dinner. We’re simply eating more at home alone.
Niobe Way, a professor of developmental psychology at N.Y.U., sees the rise in social isolation as an outcome of a culture that has become increasingly individualistic in the past 40 years, an argument she laid out in her book “Rebels With a Cause,” which examined challenges boys face. “If you live in a culture that doesn’t value connection, and I mean meaningful connection,” said Dr. Way, there’s less incentive to see others. “What’s the point of leaving the house?”
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