Americans Have Turned Into Homebodies

A new study has found that Americans are increasingly spending more time at home — a trend that was happening even before COVID forced us to stay in.

Why It Sits: People generally spending more time indoors has ripple effects on all of society, including how people consume entertainment, what they spend their money on, and where they decide to live.

Behind the Channel Surfing: Researchers out of UCLA and Clemson University found that Americans have been turning into homebodies since 2003.

• In 2019, Americans spent an average of 30 minutes less per day doing activities outside their homes and 8 minutes less commuting.
• By 2021, that dropped by over an hour, from a total of 332 minutes out of the home to 271 minutes. Travel also dropped from 69 minutes per day to 54 minutes per day.
• Time out of the house jumped back slightly by 2023, but only marginally so. On average, Americans spend 90 minutes less doing out-of-home things than in 2003.
• And even with the widespread return-to-office mandates post-COVID, workers are still spending 5x more time working from home than in the office prior to the pandemic.

The Future: By staying home, downtowns and business districts are getting hit — demand for office and retail space has fallen, and public transit doesn’t have the same ridership. On the flip side, demand for bigger living spaces has increased (amid a housing shortage), and digital subscriptions have skyrocketed in sign-ups as everything becomes a click away.

But all this homebody-ness has led to what The Atlantic has dubbed “the anti-social century.” How the repercussions of that change society may become the country’s biggest health crisis yet… reshaping how community needs to be cultivated.