The Death of Partying in the USA and Why It Matters

Summary

In January, The Atlantic's Ellen Cushing published an essay with an admirably blunt title: “Americans Need to Party More.” Burrowing into the appendix tables of the American Time Use Survey, she unearthed the fact that just 4.1 percent of Americans said they “attended or hosted” a party or ceremony on a typical weekend or holiday in 2023. In other words, in any given weekend, just one in 25 US households had plans to attend a social event.The ATUS is a government questionnaire that asks a large sample of Americans how much time they spend doing just about everything, including sleeping, working, grooming themselves, playing with their pets, and going to parties. The latest ATUS estimates were published last month. The results emphatically affirm Cushing’s diagnosis: America’s social calendar is bare.Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time that Americans spent attending or hosting a social event declined by 50 percent. Almost every age group cut their party time in half in the last two decades. For young people, the decline was even worse. Last year, Americans aged 15-to-24 spent 70 percent less time attending or hosting parties than they did in 2003.The death of the party fits into a broader social phenomenon that I called “The Anti-Social Century” in a cover story for The Atlantic. At a time of surging anxiety and mental distress, Americans spend more time alone today than in any period in recorded history. Face-to-face socializing has plummeted in the last two decades by about 20 percent. For unmarried men and people younger than 25, the decline exceeds 35 percent, which might explain why these groups seem to have fewer friends than ever.Spelunking through the ATUS database for my article, I came across a number of jaw-dropping statistics about surging American solitude:Men who watch television now spend 7 hours in front of the TV for every hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside their home. The typical female pet owner spends more time actively engage...