Stay-at-Home Americans

Adults in the United States are staying home more. Is that a problem?

Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

Key points

• After the COVID-19 pandemic, the time Americans spent at home has decreased only a little.
• A survey found that people with more income and education had especially big increases in time spent at home.
• Research shows that people who live alone are generally more connected to other people.

Over the years, do you think you have been spending more and more time at home? If so, your experiences are like those of many adults in the United States.

Over time, from 2003 through 2019, adults in the United States were spending a bit more time at home, the American Time Use Survey showed. Then, in 2020, the amount of time Americans spent at home increased markedly. That’s not surprising; that was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. What is much more notable is that since then, the time spent at home has decreased only a little. Overall, on a typical day, Americans have been at home for 1 hour and 39 minutes more in 2022 than in 2003.

Every year, a representative sample of adults in the United States aged 15 years and older keep a time diary for 24 hours of all their activities, where those activities took place, and who else (if anyone) was with them. Patrick Sharkey of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs analyzed 19 years of those Time Use Survey data and described his findings in “Homebound: The Long-Term Rise in Time Spent at Home Among U.S. Adults,” published this year (2024) in Sociological Science.

Who Is Spending All This Additional Time at Home?

Sharkey looked at people of different ages, genders, races and ethnicities, income levels, educational levels, and employment statuses. He found that people in every one of those groups spent more time at home in 2022 than they had in 2003. (Participants were asked about their marital status, but none of the results were reported separately for people of different statuses.)

For some groups, the increase in time spent at home was especially great. For example, young adults (under age 35) generally spend less time at home than older adults (55 and older), but the time they spent at home increased more for them between 2003 and 2022 than it did for the older adults.

People with more income and more education also showed especially big increases in the time they spent at home, as did men and people who were employed.

Does This Mean People Became More Socially Isolated?

People who spent more time at home also spent a lot more time alone and a little less time with friends. But they also spent more time with family. Typically, then, they were not socially isolated. And, of course, people who have online access from home can connect virtually with other people anywhere, anytime.

The results were not analyzed separately for people who live alone and people who live with others. That would have been more informative, and not necessarily in the way that may seem obvious. Research shows that people who live alone are generally more connected to other people. It is possible that people who live alone spend more time with friends than people who live with others (especially family).

Is It a Bad Thing to Spend More Time at Home?

It is easy to see this increase in time spent at home as part of the narrative of what some have called a loneliness epidemic. Participants in the survey were not asked about loneliness. However, they were asked to report their sadness and happiness during each of their activities. Preliminary analyses showed that when participants were engaging in an activity at home, they were no sadder than when they were engaging in that activity outside the home. They were less happy, though.

Is it psychologically healthy to be spending more time at home? I think the answer to this is like the answer to similar questions: Is it psychologically healthy to spend time alone? To be single?

A big part of the answer depends on the matter of choice. Are you spending lots of time at home, or alone, but wish you weren’t? That’s unlikely to be a positive experience. Are you choosing to spend time at home, or alone, but for negative reasons? For example, if you have been treated badly by your peer group in the past, and don’t want to risk it again, even though you’d love to spend time with people who would welcome you and enjoy your company, then staying home or spending time alone is not likely to be a positive experience.

Similarly, being single is a more positive and psychologically rich experience for people such as the single at heart, who are drawn to single life for all it has to offer, than for single people who really wish they were coupled. The people who told me their life stories for my Single at Heart book often described their homes as their sanctuaries. They seemed to do better during the pandemic than people who were not single at heart. They experienced their homes as comforting rather than imprisoning, and they already had a repertoire of interests they enjoyed pursuing on their own.

The Importance of Resources

I do not doubt that there are people spending more time at home than they wish, and that’s been disappointing for them, maybe even depressing. But the results of the Time Use Survey suggest that the increase in time spent at home time is also fueled in part by a positive choice. Remember the groups who were especially likely to be spending more time at home? They included the people with more resources—for example, they had more money and they were more likely to be employed. They could afford to go out to restaurants, social gatherings, sporting events, or civic or cultural events. Instead, more and more often, they stayed home.

Some were working from home when they hadn’t been doing so before the pandemic. That could account for part of the increase in time spent at home. But it is not a complete answer. The survey results showed that people were spending more time at home over the course of the 19 years not only for work, but for just about every kind of activity, such as eating and drinking, exercising, engaging in spiritual activities, and enjoying leisure activities that did not involve a computer.

It is not necessary to be financially well-off to enjoy spending time at home. But for people who do have resources, the possibilities for living a comfortable and fulfilling life from home have never been greater. They can order take-out, have their own home theaters, do their shopping online, take courses remotely, and hire people to do tasks they don’t want to do, and they can afford desirable homes and furnishings. And, remember, they are not typically socially isolated. They are just spending more time at home than they had in past years (except for the pandemic).