America becomes a nation of homebodies

In February 2025 cover story for the AtlanticThe journalist Derek Thompson called our current era “The AntiSocial Century”.

He's not flawed. According to our recent researchThe United States becomes a nation of homebodies.

Use data from the American Time Use SurveyWe examined how people within the United States spent their time before, during and after pandemic.

The Covid 19 pandemic has caused more Americans to remain at home. But this trend didn’t begin or end with pandemic. We found that the Americans had already spent increasingly time at home and did less and fewer time with activities from home that stretch back until not less than 2003.

And if you happen to thought that the top of the closures and the spread of vaccines led to a revival of celebration and sport and food, you can be flawed. The pandemic, because it seems, mainly accelerated the continuing trends.

All of this has necessary effects on traffic, public transit, real estate, workplace, conviviality and mental health.

Life inside

The trend of staying at home is just not recent.

In the 20 years before pandemic, there was a gradual decline in activities outside the home.

Compared to 2003, the Americans spent almost half-hour less a day outside of home in 2019 and eight fewer minutes a day. A variety of reasons can occur for this shift, but progress in technology, whether smartphones, streaming services or social media, are probably guilty. You can chat video with a friend as a substitute of meeting them for coffee. Order foods via an app as a substitute of venturing into the supermarket. And stream a movie as a substitute of seeing it in a theater.

Of course, there was a robust decline in activities outside the home in the course of the pandemic, which accelerated lots of these trends at home.

Outside of travel, the time that was spent for activities outside the homes fell by a mean of greater than an hour a day from 332 minutes in 2019 to 271 minutes in 2021.

But even after the Pandemic closures had been lifted, outside the house activities and the journey through 2023 remained significantly depressed, far below the extent of 2019. There was a Dramatic increase In distant work, online shopping, time that digital entertainment has spent, e.g. B. streaming and games, and even time that I spent on sleep.

Time outside the home has recovered for the reason that pandemic, but only barely. There was hardly any recovery of activities outside the home from 2022 to 2023, which implies that 2023 out-of-home activities and travel were still well below the extent of 2019. Overall, the Americans spend almost 1.5 hours less outside of their houses in 2023 than in 2003.

While the hours worked from home in 2022, they were lower than half of their statements they were in 2021, but they were still about five times as they were ahead of the pandemic. Nevertheless, only a couple of quarter of the general reduction within the travel time is because of fewer commuting. The rest reflects other forms of trips for activities reminiscent of shopping and conviviality.

Wavy effects

This shift has already had consequences.

With Americans more time worksPlay and shop from home, Request for office and retail surfaces has fallen. While there have been some calls from large employers for the staff to spend more time within the office About 25% of the working days paid. As a result, excess office space can have to be implemented as living space and for other uses.

Working and playing at home has benefits, e.g. B. avoiding travel stress and expenses. But it has too Increasing demand For additional space in apartments and houses, people spend more time under their very own roof. It has Travel modified During the standard morning – and particularly within the afternoon – the height times that spreads traffic much more evenly in the course of the day, but contributes to a very important public Transit driver's loss. Now more Package and food supply drivers compete With parked cars and bus and bike paths for curb.

The most vital thing is that the edition is less time on this planet sobering effects on Americans beyond real estate and transport systems.

Research that we’re currently carrying out indicates that more time spent at home spent more time with more time. It is sufficient to say that this does loneliness, which comes from A Lack of sensible connectionsA more common event. Loneliness and social isolation are connected increased risk of early mortality.

Because the Huning Down appears to be the brand new standard, we imagine that it’s all the more necessary for political decision -makers and on a regular basis people to search out ways to take care of connections and community within the shrinking time that they spend outside the home.