Data from the American Time Use Survey reveals just how the pandemic changed where we spend our time, who we spend it with and what we spend it doing.
The loneliness pandemic
The data from the ATUS confirmed a lot of things we already knew. We spent more time at home, less time at work and less time in big groups of people. But one statistic surprised us more than others, which was that on average, Americans spent roughly one extra hour per day alone, with time spent alone increasing for every age group surveyed from 15-19 year-olds, all the way to ages 75+.
Pre-pandemic, 15-19 year-olds spent roughly 4 hrs 20 minutes alone per day (on average). Last year that number was 6 hours per day — a 40% increase in time spent alone, the largest increase of any age group.
For 17 year-olds that change is likely to have some effects that are probably quite hard to predict. For older generations though, loneliness was a known problem long before the pandemic came along, with isolation having been linked to various medical conditions by a number of studies. It's concerning then that the ATUS found that the average person aged 75 or older spent almost 9 hours a day alone in 2020, up 40 minutes on the year before.
