A Nation Of Homebodies?
America is becoming a nation of homebodies.
In his February 2025 cover story for The Atlantic, journalist Derek Thompson dubbed our current era “the anti-social century.”
He isn’t wrong. According to our recent research, the U.S. is becoming a nation of homebodies.
Using data from the American Time Use Survey, we studied how people in the U.S. spent their time before, during and after the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic did spur more Americans to stay home. But this trend didn’t start or end with the pandemic. We found that Americans were already spending more and more time at home and less and less time engaged in activities away from home stretching all the way back to at least 2003.
And if you thought the end of lockdowns and the spread of vaccines led to a revival of partying an...
