Who Americans spend their time with

Alone and co-workers. Sad.

Longitudinal data would be informative. I strongly suspect people spent less time alone in the past. (Note: The X-axis is age.)

My theories:

* Multitude of choices given to us by technology have led to fewer things we pay attention to in common with our friends and neighbors. Thus, fewer shared loci of interaction. Career specialization is another key contributing factor.

* More recently, dopamine rush generated by endless new contents tailored to our preferences has made real-world interactions and activities dull by comparison. More people choose to spend time alone with that rush. In the long run, it might result in weaker social ties and less healthy psychology for some/many people.

Research has shown that strong social ties are important for mental and even physical health.

How do we design technologies and social institutions to help connect people in the real world and alleviate the problems?

Rigtheo, so now we need to compare to other cultures and overlay the results with mental health issues, self-reported happiness, income, GDP, obesity, and all the other interesting metrics.

We already know the results though: people who have strong family ties and closer and enduring friendships and sense of community live longer healthier lives than their lonely counterparts and are more productive at work and in their own pursuits.

On the up side: people who are more separate, isolated, lonely, without being to far in to the pathological extremes, tend to buy more things, which is good for The Economy.

These graphs are a great example of why you should always label your axes. If you submitted these to a journal they'd be sent back for correction (assuming the editor didn't rage-toss your paper at first sight). If you included these in an undergraduate lab report they'd be docked marks heavily.