Over the past two decades, we’ve been reallocating our time away from offices, malls, and classrooms… and toward home and solitude. Hyunsoo Rim illustrates…
With our Covid-induced lockdowns now a moderately foggy memory for most, the last few years have turned out to be a continued normalization for many of the habits that defined the pandemic era.
Peloton bikes are now doubling as coat racks; the banana bread craze has cooled; Zoom’s share price is almost back to where it started; millions of people have gone back to clothes shopping in person; and companies like Del Monte are stuck with mountains of unsold canned fruit that’s no longer flying off the shelves.
But one seismic lifestyle change has proven far more permanent than any fitness fad or panic-buying spree — and it turns out to be part of a much longer trend that’s been building for decades: Americans are spending more time at home, and alone. And not everyone has the means to break that growing trend…
[Rim uses infographics to chart American’s use of time…]
… According to the annual American Time Use Survey (ATUS) — a self-reporting survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — an average American’s typical day still breaks down pretty much the same as it did 20 years ago. Roughly a third still goes to sleep, a fifth to leisure and sports, and, perhaps most surprising to anyone feeling burned out, just one-sixth to work. The rest goes to household chores, meals, and everything else. The survey does, of course, represent the average, with many retirees likely skewing the work figures down.
But if you look closer, the routines underneath tell a different story about how the collective American experience has changed.
Over the past two decades, Americans have gained about 30 minutesof sleep per day — now averaging over nine hours, more than ever — and spend roughly 11 more minuteson household activities such as cooking, cleaning, and pet care.
Where did those extra hours come from? It seems like we’ve carved them out of work commutes, mall trips, and in-person classes… activities that usually have us interacting with others out in public in some way.
Some of this shift can certainly be explained by demographic factors — America is an older country than it was in 2003, as birth rates have dropped. Nevertheless, on aggregate, the figures are pretty staggering for a nation of 340+ million people — and the sharp rise in the pandemic era suggests at least a decent amount of the shift is behavioral.
Indeed, in 2003, the average American spent 7.7 hours per day at home, according to the ATUS data compiled by IPUMS. By 2024, that rose to 9.1 hours, with the pandemic only accelerating the climb…
… what’s more striking is how time once spent outside or with others has steadily moved in the opposite direction…
… As more of our daily lives have moved home and online, the same shift is reshaping how we unwind. Since 2003, time spent socializing and communicating — from hanging out with family and friends to hosting events — has fallen 24%, while travel time is down 26%…
… But not everyone is experiencing the shift in the same way. As evidence for the K-shaped economy — where some groups thrive while others struggle — becomes harder to ignore, income is proving to be a strong differentiator.
In fact, households earning under $35,000 now spend about 10 hours a day at home, almost an hour and a half longer than those earning $150,000 or more. The pattern holds for time spent alone, too, with a two-hour daily gap between the lowest- and highest-income groups…
… wealthier Americans aren’t just spending less time at home; they’re more likely to pay their way out of it, with restaurant meals instead of cooking, pilates classes instead of home workouts, or washer-dryer combos instead of hours tied up in chores.
For the very wealthiest, that logic even goes further: according to a recent survey by Long Angle, nearly two-thirds of multimillionaires now outsource housekeeping, while about half pay for gardening services and two-fifths employ nannies.
Of course, time at home and alone isn’t inherently negative — as researchers note that, for many, solitude can be valued as a way to rest, think, or create. But when more of your day is taken up by unpaid chores and low-cost, home-bound leisure, that retreat indoors starts to look less like a choice…
Americans are spending more time at home and alone — and money determines who can opt out. Eminently worth reading in full: “Home. Alone.” from @sherwood.news.
* Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes (August 28, 1988)
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As we contemplate our calendars, we might recall that it was on this date in 1967 that kids across America could “go out” even as they stayed in: they were invited for the first time into Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, as the series premiered on NET (which later became PBS). The show had had earlier local incarnations in Canada, then in Pittsburgh, where the national show was birthed and produced. Michael Keaton, who worked for the Pittsburgh public television station WQED at the time, often helped out with Roger’s show. And future horror director George A. Romero worked on the show shooting short films.
Just over 30 years ago, my GBN partner Stewart Brand and I were discussing the then-new web affordance Pointcast, an active screensaver that displayed news and other information tailored to a user’s expressed interests and delivered live over the Internet. It was big news at the time; and while it failed, it prefigured the emergence of the algorithms that today feed “preferences” that we don’t even need (nor for that matter have the opportunity) to articlulate.
The problem, we mused, is that a system like that becomes a trap, one that (by simply satisfying expressed desires) impicitly works against discovery of the altogether new, of the thing we didn’t yet know might interest (or benefit) us. A system like that pulls us more deeply into holes instead of helping us explore broader horizons– it is biased against discovery, against learning (in its broadest sense). Our most important discoveries are often the books somewhere on the library shelp near the one we were seeking, the article in the (old print) newpaper next to the one to which we were intially drawn.
The answer, we imagined, wasn’t to skip such systems altogether; they can play a useful role; rather, it was to introduce a complementary “dial-up randomness”– to create ways to feed ourselves a stream of surprises.
[Recently] a New York-based app developer named Isaac Gemal [here] debuted a new site called WikiTok, where users can vertically swipe through an endless stream of Wikipedia article stubs in a manner similar to the interface for video-sharing app TikTok.
It’s a neat way to stumble upon interesting information randomly, learn new things, and spend spare moments of boredom without reaching for an algorithmically addictive social media app. Although to be fair, WikiTok is addictive in its own way, but without an invasive algorithm tracking you and pushing you toward the lowest-common-denominator content. It’s also thrilling because you never know what’s going to pop up next.
WikiTok, which works through mobile and desktop browsers, feeds visitors a random list of Wikipedia articles—culled from the Wikipedia API—into a vertically scrolling interface. Despite the name that hearkens to TikTok, there are currently no videos involved. Each entry is accompanied by an image pulled from the corresponding article. If you see something you like, you can tap “Read More,” and the full Wikipedia page on the topic will open in your browser.
For now, the feed is truly random, and Gemal is currently resisting calls to automatically tailor the stream of articles to the user’s interests based on what they express interest in.
“I have had plenty of people message me and even make issues on my GitHub asking for some insane crazy WikiTok algorithm,” Gemal told Ars. “And I had to put my foot down and say something along the lines that we’re already ruled by ruthless, opaque algorithms in our everyday life; why can’t we just have one little corner in the world without them?”
The breadth of topics you’ll encounter on WikiTok is staggering, owing to the wide range of knowledge that Wikipedia covers…
… Gemal posted the code for WikiTok on GitHub, so anyone can modify or contribute to the project. Right now, the web app supports 14 languages, article previews, and article sharing on both desktop and mobile browsers. New features may arrive as contributors add them. It’s based on a tech stack that includes React 18, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Vite.
And so far, he is sticking to his vision of a free way to enjoy Wikipedia without being tracked and targeted. “I have no grand plans for some sort of insane monetized hyper-calculating TikTok algorithm,” Gemal told us. “It is anti-algorithmic, if anything.”
As we supersize serendipity, we might recall that it was on this date in 1967 that a remarkably warm and open new neighbor moved into the neighborhood: Misteroger’s Neighborhood premeired nationally on public television stations.
Fred McFeely Rogers was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania on March 20, 1928. After earning his bachelor’s degree in music from Rollins College in 1951, he began working for NBC for a short time in New York. In 1953, he began working at the new public television station WQED for the show, The Children’s Corner where he learned that wearing sneakers were a lot quieter on the set than his dress shoes.
In 1961, Rogers moved to Toronto, Ontario to work on a new 15-minute show called Misterogers for CBC Television. In 1966, Rogers went back to WQED to create Misteroger’s Neighborhood.
In 1970, the show was renamed Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The series ended again in 1976 but was picked up three years later when Rogers felt as if his work speaking to children wasn’t done. The show continued from 1979 through 2001. Mr. Rogers passed away on February 27, 2003.
In 2011, PBS created an animated “spinoff” of the show called Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood featuring the characters Rogers had created in his “land of make-believe”; and in 2019, Tom Hanks portrayed Rogers in the film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” a role that earned him an Oscar nomination.
Back in 2011, on his blog devoted to all things Mister Rogers, neighborhoodarchive.com, Tim Lybarger recorded the color of every sweater Rogers wore in each episode between 1979 and 2001. “When I realized such a resource didn’t exist… I just felt like somebody needed to do it…might as well be me.”…
* Fred Rogers (the first line of the lyrics of his theme song for his series, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood)
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As we agree to be his neighbor, we might recall that it was on this date in 1990 that Americans were invited into a very different kind of neighborhood: NBC premiered Seinfeld. (In fact, the pilot– with a different title [The Seinfeld Chronicles] and a different female lead [“Claire the waitress” instead of Elaine]– was broadcast in July of 1989; but NBC didn’t pick up the series until the following year.)
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