Working from home drives rise in time young people spend alone
The shift to working from home has removed a major source of face-to-face interaction for those early in their careers with young people, particularly men, spending more time alone today than a decade ago, according to new Resolution Foundation.
All by myself – supported by the Economic and Social Research Council-funded (ESRC) Connecting Generations research programme – explores how patterns of time spent alone have changed by age over the last ten years, and what explains these changes.
The research finds that young men (aged 18-29) spent more than two-fifths of their waking time alone (six and a half hours a day) in 2023, two hours more than in 2014-15. Young women are now spending an additional one and a half hours a day alone (roughly five hours a day in total). At the other end of the age spectrum, older people are now alone less, with women over 60 and men over 70 spending around one to one and a half fewer hours a day
Among all working-age adults, paid work was the biggest driver of the increased time spent alone since the mid-2010s, with working from home accounting for roughly two-thirds of the rise in work done alone. Most significantly, men aged 18-29 now spend one and a half hours a day more doing work alone than in the mid-2010s.
This rise in young people spending time alone, and feeling lonely, should not go unnoticed, says the author. Some alone time can be restorative, but there can be negative implications for health and wellbeing. Concerningly, 18-29-year-olds who reported being in bad health in 2023 spent three more hours a day alone than the same age group in 2014-15, a pattern not replicated for the older age groups.
With young people now more likely to be alone and lonely, time use is key to conversations about intergenerational inequality going forwards. The fact that increases in alone time are coming from paid work – which people have less control over – suggests implications for policy makers. If policy makers are serious about improving the wellbeing and life satisfaction of young adults, then the work they do, and who they do it with, deserves to be in the debate as much as their screen time.
Parth Pandya, Researcher at the Resolution Foundation, said:
“Young adults are now spending more time alone than they did a decade ago, with men aged 18-29 in particular now alone for more than two-fifths of their waking hours.’’
“Screen time is the usual suspect in conversations about the rise in loneliness among young people, but time spent doing paid work by themselves was the biggest driver of rising hours spent alone, with working from home – a legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic – accounting for the majority of this.
“If policy makers are serious about improving young people’s wellbeing, then work needs to be part of the debate as much as screen time.’’
https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/all-by-myself/
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