Americans are quickly becoming a solitary group, and that’s concerning for a whole host of reasons.
And before you start pointing to the pandemic of the past two years as a reason for the downtrend, which would be valid, it turns out that time with friends went down between 2014 and 2019 more than it has even during the COVID-19 era.
It’s a bleak picture painted by Bryce Ward, an economist and the founder of ABMJ Consulting, in a recent Washington Post editorial.
For some reason, in 2014, time with friends really started to fall off a cliff collectively. Coincidentally, it was noted in the article that market penetration for smartphones crossed 50 percent in 2014, so if you’re looking for a potential smoking gun here, that could certainly be it.
No matter how you look at it, though, Americans are simply spending less time with other people. Time with friends was reduced to just four hours a week by 2019, down 37 percent from five years prior). And even when you expand the definition of “friends” to include coworkers, neighbors, and clients, that time was reduced to just ten hours a week in 2021, a decline from 15 hours a week a decade ago. Interestingly enough, that time doesn’t transfer over to loved ones – people in this country just really love being alone these days.
Though if you ask most people, I wonder if they’d even categorize their time as being alone. If you’re sitting at home by yourself, but you’re constantly on social media, would you even realize what you’re truly missing being in the company of other people? This is most concerning for American teenagers aged 15-19, as they are now spending 11 fewer hours per week with friends and 12 more hours per week alone. That’s just not how it’s supposed to be when you’re a kid, no matter how much technology and “access” we have at our fingertips.
So what can we really do about this? The easiest thing – though perhaps also the hardest – is to put down the phone, unless you’re using it to make plans with a friend. Or anyone, really. While the pandemic was no doubt a step back in maintaining our social lives, we were losing sight of their importance long beforehand. The emotional, mental, and physical benefits of being around other people are well-documented, and it’s a key component to a happy, fulfilling life, no matter what any social media network says in trying to convince you otherwise.
Every single app is designed to keep you on it for as long as possible. Those quick dopamine rushes you get when someone likes a post, the infinite scrolling capabilities, the algorithms designed to make you see posts that’ll make you angry enough to respond… none of this is geared towards improving your mental health. Seeing your friends and family, though? It’s the only thing that matters in this crazy world, and you’ll leave feeling better than you could have imagined. It sounds ridiculous having to say that, but it’s what a lot of Americans apparently need to hear right now.
