Updated January 30, Reviewed by Gary Drevitch. And not just on one day of the year. Socializing can contribute to a happy life. Often our alone time is spent at home. But there can be something truly wonderful about just staying home. Although the single at heart probably love their home-alone time as much or more than anyone, it turns out that we are not the only happy homebodies.
Adults in the U. Of course, the time adults spent at home spiked in , at the height of the pandemic, with its lockdowns and social distancing. In the years since, time spent at home has decreased some, but remains far higher than it was in , before the pandemic.
Despite the ominous title, this is not an article about people getting ostracized or rejected. Americans are spending more time alone, he believesβrightly, I thinkβbecause we want to. We find it convenient, comfortable, and pleasant to spend time by ourselves. In his view, we are spending too much time alone. And he cites some correlational evidence. And typically, they were also less stressed when they were at home. Missing from the lengthy Atlantic article was any mention of what scholars of solitude have been discovering about the potential benefits of spending time alone.
Participants kept track of the amount of time they spent alone and with others, and how they experienced that time. Results showed that on days when people spent more time alone, they felt less stressed. They also felt freer to be who they are, rather than feeling pressured to be a certain way. Those day-by-day advantages of spending time alone added up; people who spent more time alone across the 21 days felt less stress overall and more like themselves.
It's not that there were no costs to spending time alone. On any given day, people who spent more time alone were lonelier and less satisfied with how their day went.
