(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- When single adults gather in a room these days, the awkwardness can be overwhelming. “A lot of people have more anxiety now,” says Amber Soletti, the founder of Single and the City, an organization that puts on speed-dating events in New York and Austin. “They’re out of practice. They’ve forgotten how to engage with people face-to-face.”
The economic downturn precipitated by the pandemic was mercifully brief. But a new Stanford University study, along with recent government survey data, bolster the conclusion that the virus also sparked a recession in Americans’ social lives—one that lingers years after most US adults were vaccinated. For millions, dating and other social activity never recovered, with effects that aren’t just personal and psychological but economic and perhaps even political.
The labor supply, housing demand and tax revenue all depend on demographic dynamics that begin with a first date. Casual dating can lead to moving in together, marriage, children, homeownership and joint savings accounts. “Almost all of the more serious relationships start in this gray area,” says Stanford sociology professor Michael Rosenfeld. “But those beginning relationships are more vulnerable to disruption and breakup.”
When Covid-19 hit, Rosenfeld reran a survey he had conducted in 2017 to measure those more casual ties. The exercise revealed that millions of informal relationships fell apart, even as married and cohabitating couples survived the pandemic largely intact. More disturbing than the size of this dating disruption—encompassing more than 1 out of every 20 US adults—was the timing. After the number of singles surged in 2020, when in-person dating was dangerous, Rosenfeld ran the survey again in 2022 and was surprised to find that despite the mass vaccine rollout, even more people were alone and not dating. Compared with before the pandemic, he estimates an extra 13.3 million Americans were single by 2022.
Other recent data show the invisible scars of Covid. Each year, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics asks thousands of people how they spend their days and aggregates the information into an annual compendium called the American Time Use Survey. The latest survey finds adults in 2023 spent far more time alone, and far less time chatting face-to-face and participating in group activities, than four years earlier. The data also show Americans’ social lives haven’t bounced back in a measurable way from 2022 or even 2021. Rather than creating a temporary disruption, Covid seems to have accelerated the US’s decades-long decline in connection and community.
Many businesses have already noticed their customers feeling less convivial. Fewer dates and social outings means traffic at full-service, sit-down restaurants still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, data from the National Restaurant Association show, even as business for other food service offerings—delivery, takeout, fast food and fast casual—keeps hitting records. Bars and nightclubs are also struggling. The amount of alcohol Americans consume has been slowly rising for 25 years, but a shrinking share of those drinks are being served by bartenders. In the US last year, research firm IWSR estimates, 85% of alcohol was purchased at a store, compared with 15% at an on-premises venue. This share of drinking at restaurants, bars and clubs has declined three points since 2017, and is half the global rate.
A longer-term consequence of the “dating recession,” Rosenfeld says, is that Americans continue to delay traditional adult milestones. Since the 1980s, the shares of those who live on their own, get married, have children or buy a home by age 30 have been dropping steadily. Most forecasters assume young Americans will eventually do those things. The question is when. Here’s one troubling stat: The Census Bureau estimates the population of children under 5 years old plunged 889,000 between 2020 and 2023, a decline of almost 5%.
“The pandemic has been especially brutal on the social lives of young people,” Rosenfeld says. His paper, “Singleness and the Pandemic Dating Recession,” finds the surge in singles since Covid was concentrated among Americans under age 40. “The ability to form and sustain romantic relationships requires muscle memory and experience that some of our young people don’t have,” Rosenfeld says. “The pandemic robbed them of crucial years of socialization.”
“It’s so easy to hide behind a screen,” says Maxwell Poyser, 26, who heads marketing at Fern Connections, a matchmaking, date coaching and events company focused on LGBTQ clients. “You almost don’t see a need to go out and meet people in person,” she says, because people have formed long-term friendships with people they only interact with online. “They don’t know what they’re missing out on. They have nothing to compare it to.”
Companies and businesses across the economy have been scrambling to adjust to a more socially isolated consumer, one who is also “searching for convenience and time-saving in every phase of their lives,” says Huy Do, an analyst at food and beverage industry research firm Datassential. He notes that many of the fastest-growing chains are drive-thru coffee shops such as Dutch Bros Inc. and Scooter’s Coffee—which offer nowhere to sit with a friend and catch up.
For decades, Starbucks Corp. has touted itself as a “third place,” borrowing a term coined by the late sociologist Ray Oldenburg for gathering spots outside of home and work. In 2022 the company said it was “reimagining the third place” by emphasizing faster service as well as its mobile app, which lets customers pick up their ventis without speaking to a soul. “The Third Place has never been defined solely by a physical space, it’s also the feeling of warmth, connection, a sense of belonging [at] Starbucks,” the company said when it announced the changes.
Rising costs have reinforced social isolation, putting food and nightlife businesses in a bind. When prices increase, customers stay home to save money, which isolates them further and gives them even fewer reasons to leave the house. Datassential’s Do says bars, restaurants and other social venues must break the cycle by asking: “How do we make that experience more exciting to people who have less reasons to go out than they did before?”
Developers are responding to America’s social recession by building more smaller homes, a strategy that can also cut costs. From 2019 to 2023, Census data show a 65% surge in new apartments of less than 1,000 square feet, while units of 1,200 square feet or more declined. Construction of new single-family houses under 1,400 square feet rose 34% in the last four years, triple the increase overall. “Fewer people per household translates to less space needed,” says Chris Porter, chief demographer at John Burns Research & Consulting. Builders are also considering more houses with two primary bedrooms, he says, “knowing that some buyers may plan for a housemate.”
Last year the US Surgeon General declared an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” Other public-health authorities had declared loneliness a serious problem years earlier—the UK appointed a minister of loneliness in 2018—amid evidence that a lack of human connection had serious health effects. A 2015 Brigham Young University meta-analysis of 70 research studies found social isolation increased the risk of premature death by 29%.
The latest data suggest Americans spent as much time alone last year as in 2021, Covid-’s deadliest year. In 2023 the average US adult spent four hours a week “socializing and communicating,” a category that includes chatting with other people face-to-face and attending or hosting social events. That’s the same amount of time as in 2021, down from 4.5 hours in 2019—and 5.5 hours a week in 2003. (The time use survey wasn’t conducted in 2020.)
Time spent on typically solo pursuits—“relaxing and thinking,” “playing games” and “computer use for leisure”—has surged since Covid hit and even more so since 2003, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics introduced the time use survey.
Americans do seem to be trying to mix with others more, by scheduling and joining more formal get-togethers. They spent an average of 29 minutes per week attending or hosting social events in 2023, the time use data show, 40% more than the year before and above pre-pandemic levels. At her events for singles, Soletti has seen a 67% rise in attendance over the past year. More of these new folks seem to be younger people, she says, “the ones who are struggling more socially.”
As always, it’s hard to separate out social challenges from economic ones. Staying single has its advantages, but it’s also more expensive. Singles “don’t have economies of scale,” says Boston University sociology professor Deborah Carr, such as splitting the rent and other expenses, sharing health insurance or chipping in for a down payment. “The longer you’re in that state, the more it can erode your savings.”
The soaring cost of housing also makes parenthood much more difficult. A March study published in the Population Research and Policy Review finds US renters are at any given moment 46% less likely than homeowners to have a baby, with effects strongest in the least affordable areas.
Surveys of consumers and voters have consistently found Americans in a foul mood, despite low unemployment and strong economic growth. Inflation is the obvious culprit, but greater social isolation can’t be helping. “What we’re seeing is a dramatic lack of hope,” says Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, a closely watched gauge of US economic health. “People are in a funk about politics. People are in a funk about the economy. It would not surprise me if that was connected to being in a funk in more personal areas. People feel defeated.”
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