Time Spent Socializing by Age Group
Trending down for two decades
When I was gathering the data for last week’s post, Does AI Rot Your Brain?, I also spent some time becoming familiar with the data available at the BLS American Time Use Survey. I was already aware that younger people are socializing less, and with the availability of 2024 data, it is worthwhile to examine the trends in the amount of time different age groups spend on socializing and communication (as defined by BLS).
Let’s go to the data.
Figure 1 presents the mean hours spent each month socializing and communicating by age group. Before I make any comments, please take some time to examine the graph and form your own conclusions. Keep in mind that the ups and downs around the corresponding lines are mostly noise due to sampling.
The first thing most of us likely noticed was the decline in socializing for those between the ages of 15 and 24 (purple), from about 30 hours a month to about 19 hours a month. That’s a decrease by over 1/3. Moreover, 15- to 24-year-olds are socializing less in 2024 than all other groups did twenty years ago.
Another key observation is that this decrease has nothing to do with COVID. You’ll note that there aren’t any dots for 2020, as there is no data for that year. If we had data for that year, it would likely be a low outlier, but the trend was down before 2020 and still continues downward from 2021 to 2024.
In higher education we hear a lot about building community and how students want community. I’m not sure this is true, but we are told we need to do this to help retain students. Maybe they do want community, but it sure seems like they aren’t that interested in getting away from the screen and hanging out. My concern for residential colleges is, what is the point of a residential college experience if students just stay in their rooms in front We all want to know if male and female behavior is different, so here is one more graph.
Figure 2 has a few twists. What do you see?
Not surprisingly, females tend to socialize more than males, but generally the slope of the lines is the same for males and females. There are, however, two exceptions. The 25 to 34 and the 25 to 44 age groups have lines showing males socializing more than females. The decline in female socializing has been faster than that for males in those two groups. Currently, I do not have any theories about why this is occurring. I’d like to hear your conjectures in the comments.
These patterns of less socialization don't seem good to me overall. If nothing else, the less people socialize, the less likely they are to hear opinions different from their own. It is much easier to demonize people you never spend time with. Secondly, it certainly seems that less socializing during youth leads to fewer romantic opportunities. Please feel free to share your thoughts on these impacts in the comments.
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I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD in Math: Stochastic Processes, MS in Applied Statistics, MS in Math, BS in Math, BS in Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks “R for College Mathematics and Statistics” and “Applied Calculus with R.”I welcome any collaborations, and I’m open to job offers.
Very interesting data! Being a 24 year old college-educated female (25 in two months), I have several theories on why women (and men) my age are socializing less.
The first is the impact of computers and smartphones. We are all, to a degree, overstimulated by parasocial relationships and being constantly available. We are also super busy, and have less leisure time than generations past. Those in college are working part-time on top of studying, might be doing anti-social extracurriculars (gaming, content creation, reading, studying), and have low distress tolerance (necessary to be resilient to minor social rebuffs/etiquette failures). Those of us working 9-5 have many of the same issues, especially if we live near where there are jobs (low intro salaries and record high rent rates and food prices). Alternatively, many of us commute long distances to avoid paying such high rent, which again takes away time to socialize.
Another reason, which is conjecture on my part and not supported by this data, is that COVID gave a lot of us social anxiety and the desire to upskill. We spend our free time working on ourselves while also being afraid to be vulnerable with other people. We are also bombarded with news that makes the outside world seem like a dumpster fire (I'm an American), which weighs on us tremendously.
Lastly, we were also raised on tech and with socially-strict Gen X parents. Gen X socially fucked around and found out (for lack of a better phrase) and wanted their kids to turn out "better". I know I personally had the fears of 1) strangers, 2) adult men, 3) teen pregnancy, 4) boyfriends before 16, 5) razorblades in my Halloween candy, 6) not getting into college and needing to flip burgers, 7) underage drinking, and 8) drugs, bread into me from the time I was old enough to understand any of it. Most of us weren't allowed to run around and play in the street as kids, nor was I (specifically) allowed to go to friends birthday parties/sleepovers if my parents did not know their parents. I think all of this has lasting impacts on us.