Article
The Death of Partying in the U.S.A.—and Why It Matters
Derek Thompson
- 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.
- Last year, Americans aged 15-to-24 spent 70 percent less time attending or hosting parties than they did in 20031.
- 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.
- 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.
- After the 1970s, Americans pulled back from just about every form of socializing. By the late 1990s, the share of Americans who said they visited the homes of friends in the previous week had declined by more than 40 percent.
- think the death of partying, like the anti-social century, emerges from a complicated set of factors, which spans labor economics, family dynamics, consumer technology, and modern psychology.
- Wives, not husbands, historically planned the quilting parties, the bridge games, and the neighborhood potlucks. But in the second half of the 20th century, many women swapped unpaid family jobs for salaried positions.