> Preliminary analysis indicates that time at home is associated with lower levels of happiness and less meaning
I wonder if this is something that needs a closer look. I enjoy spending time at home. I'd rather be at home than pretty much anywhere else. Even before the pandemic I felt this way. The pandemic itself was like a vacation.
Many people mention the loss of third places as a contributing factor in these threads. Lower church attendance, the death of shopping malls, difficulties in accessing nice parks, etc. I am sympathetic to this idea. However, it is a very US-centric point of view as well. Many countries don’t have car-centric suburban sprawl that North America has. So I’m wondering if places seen as more walkable have the same trends of time spent at home, and if those trends are as strongly tied to quality of life problems.
Looking at the paper, page 564 [0] has the component graph. Looks like the key contributors are (in order of contribution):
- Work-Related Activities (~35 minutes more at home)
- Sleeping - Assumed at Home (~25 minutes more at home)
- Leisure - Not On Computer (~22 minutes more at home)
What I find interesting, is the key differences in total time spent. There seems to be generally more time spent sleeping actually (~25 more minutes), and that time comes from a decrease in socializing (-~15 minutes), and transportation (commuting, -~20 minutes).
Overall, less commuting and more sleep seems good, but a decrease in socialization is not great, a full 1 3/4 hours a week decrease.
[0]: https://sociologicalscience.com/download/vol_11/august/SocSc...
We continue to lose our third spaces and a cohesive weekly ritual.
Even places that flourished because they were third spaces, like Starbucks, are dropping their seating to lower numbers to “get rid of the riff raff” or whatever.
The US is hilariously car-centric and when you’re not driving to go to work, there’s less of an urge to drive at any time; and, without walkability too, there’s even more loss in socializing.
It’s all a net loss.
If I understand correctly, the article looks at data from 2003 to 2022. I’m not sure if I would call that long-term. What about 1922 to 2022 for example? Or even longer.
From what I understand from my parents and grandparents (I’m Gen X), they did quite a lot of stuff at home (i.e. meet friends, make music etc.)
Going out was the exception, not the norm.
Since removing the office from my life, I think I spend more time at home and more time in social spaces. Meaning, obviously I spend an extra eight hours a day at home, but I also go out more than I used to. When I worked in an office and commuted every day, I was so exhausted after work that I didn't want to do anything at night, and weekends were for recharging my battery for week to come. Now that I don't have to deal with that, I have a lot more motivation to go out and do fun stuff. The last five years have been the most active and happy time of my adult life. Probably not true for everyone, but true for me.
It would help if being outside your house didn't mean spending a bunch of money...but in so many towns, that's all there is to find: Stores and restaurants, or a small yucky space on a bench between unsavory individuals with a drug habit. I've seen the EU pubs, yes beer, but also coffee, some money is spent, but it's also open to prolonged conversations with neighbors without looks at you to leave right away.
Pet Peeve Time: Suburban neighborhoods these days typically only have a few entrances and exits... The effect of this is that unless you live in that neighborhood you won't enter it... This makes the streets quieter because you don't have any traffic passing through.. but it means that the major arteries have to have higher speeds... which I think isolates those neighborhoods.
Is this not explained by remote work? Some portion of adults who used to spend ~50 hours at an office and commuting are spending it at home.
Going outside involves spending money, so as long as the median income chart looks like this [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/US_GDP_p...], expect this trend to grow.
Maybe a trajectory question: will the US have a lot of people like Japan's Hikikomori?
In one essay, Christopher Alexander calls suburb design schizophrenic, in reference to how suburb dwellers are forced more and more inward.
It's certainly an appropriate description. I've lived in the suburbs for thirty something years and have never made a single friend there. Travel requires a car, and there's no place interesting you can get to without a car. The optimal strategy for life is therefore to pass the threshold of depression and insanity and become a computer-addicted robot who derives pleasure only from typing on the comments section of the internet.
I've been thinking of ways to fix the problem but there's no bandage for removing the cars and redesigning the whole thing. I've thought of structures a clever person might be able to build to attract socialization, and I'm sure almost all of them are against zoning laws.
It's hard for me to emphasize with loneliness, as I've honestly never felt lonely a day in my life. It initially surprised me that people were bothered by working from home due to loneliness.
I really recommend the book Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time by Sheila Liming if you want to explore this issue more. Lots of interesting exploration about spending time in person.
it's almost like western society, particularly in the united states, has spent the last 70 years intentionally stripping away community and easy access to a third place.
I was just in a USA town called Jacksonville, NC, and noticed a very large area called The Commons, with schools, sports fields, parks, wooded areas, walking paths, ponds, courts, the whole thing. Really well-designed area. Very active with walkers, runners, cyclists, etc.
But want a coffee? Check your phone, and see there's a coffee place maybe a half-mile away. Stop there after a run at The Commons, and it's a car-only place. (7-Brew)
A factor I haven't seen mentioned here is weather. It's become so hot now that people are hiding indoors during the hottest parts of the day. After a while gotta consider if it's even worth going outside.
Its interesting that they focus only on the last 20 years. I'd really be more curious to see how that compares to a much longer timeline. How much time did people spend at home a hundred years ago? Or a thousand years ago?
So many people are working from home. Nice job Sherlock, adults spend more time at home since Covid... I agree it's an important issue though.
If I was not going to look for a remote job before, I'm definitely going to look for one now.
In Farming and Hunter days, we spent all the time at home.
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Endless comments, text and gibberish when the answer is just the smartphone.
"The changes in daily life induced by the COVID-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to longstanding concerns about social isolation in the United States."
Sigh, once again, it's wasn't COVID19 itself; it was the paranoid, destructive over-reaction that forced isolation that caused this.
It's because the standard way we develop neighborhoods does not lend itself to people being able to leave their homes. My parents just bought a condo in a newer development in a rapidly growing metro, and while they can walk around their complex, there's no sidewalks to anywhere else, and even if there were, the city zoning laws means there's no corner cafe, bakery, or small-scale store like there really ought to be. It's so stupid and such an easy thing to fix: just require that each adjacent complex have a right of way and sidewalks and zone for cottage businesses every few blocks. Makes everything more pleasant, and people have something to do when they leave their house without having to get into the car.
EDIT: This [1] is the kind of neighborhood i'm talking about. Growing rapidly, cheap housing -- great, but they're setting themselves up for real heartbreak because the complexes don't connect. To walk to the park that's not even a mile away requires walking on a huge, busy road. All they need to have to make it not feel dangerous is a dirt path and a required gate between complexes. That's it. [2]
I'm honestly not sure why we think this kind of development is even normal. Roads really ought to connect. It also makes the traffic so much worse. I live two miles from downtown Portland and my street outside my house gets significantly less traffic than my parents.
I fully expect to move my parents somewhere near us as they age. It's just not possible for them to leave the house when they get older without having to drive, whereas older people in my grid-based, sidewalk neighborhood can walk for miles and achieve their entire life.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Clark+County+Fairgrounds/@...
[2] Meanwhile, our park is technically farther away (about a mile) and we walk there almost everyday and know all the neighbors down the street. We just went to a party at one of the neighbor's homes and the only relation we have is that we wave at each other as their kids play in the yard and mine ride their bikes to the park. I want to leave the house half the time because I have friends outside. That's all you need.