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40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

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Re: 40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

#31

Post by throw0101a »

pavlov wrote: post #7

Is it a bad thing? People's life choices are their own. 29% seems like a fairly neutral number.

> Is it a bad thing? People's life choices are their own.

How much of a choice is it that they made willing? The number has doubled over the last few decades:

* https://www.self.inc/blog/adults-living-alone

* https://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/tag/living-alon...

There are health (and happiness) consequences to not being connected to other people:

* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness_epidemic

Re: 40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

#32

Post by whywhywhywhy »

latexr wrote: post #6

If more people lived together with friends, that’d make a dent in both the housing and loneliness crises.

Living close to friends and having a community that knows/supports each other helps a lot but living with friends is a good way to end up with less friends. Someone you can stand being around all day is very different than someone you really enjoy spending a few hours a month with.

Re: 40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

#33

Post by latexr »

lazide wrote: post #11
latexr wrote: post #6

If more people lived together with friends, that’d make a dent in both the housing and loneliness crises.

The issue is the number of people who ‘surprise’ you with out of control behaviors that are a huge issue with room mates. And getting out of living situation with someone like that can be extremely difficult. People can seem perfectly fine, until they seem to spontaneously turn into hoarders, or start eating all your food and lying about it, or start being aggressively in your face about a bunch of antagonistic cultu…

There’s definitely some risk, but the alternative is not a panacea either (high rents, loneliness). You can also get closer to people and enrich your life, and it’s positive to practice tolerance for the behaviours of others (within reason).

It’s possible there are more unhinged people today, but I think that’s also a consequence of us spending so much time alone in the first place (and sycophantic bots are only going to make that worse).

I was also thinking of everyone, not just US Americans.

Re: 40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

#34

Post by throw0101a »

gniv wrote: post #13

It's not a high number when compared to other first-world countries: https://statranker.org/population/top-10-countries-with-high...

> https://statranker.org/population/top-10-countries-with-high...

It's not (just) about the absolute number, but the trend as well; see "Chart 2. Rise of single-person households, 1990–2025".

Re: 40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

#35

Post by Cthulhu_ »

g-b-r wrote: post #14
b3ing wrote: post #2

Any causes? Is it that we are too independent and don’t like collectivism? A conspiracy might say it’s on purpose to have more people pay for things typically bought for a couple. Like everyone having their own house, cable bill, utility bill, water bill, …

Probably most of all the increase of the age of marriage

Which I think is a secondary effect of many other things happening; staying in school for longer, much higher cost of living, cultural shifts like being more aware of what is normal and acceptable in a relationship, etc. It's not unusual for people to be in their 30's before finally having some (financial, etc) breathing room to even consider things like marriage / kids.

Re: 40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

#36

Post by Cthulhu_ »

booleandilemma wrote: post #10
b3ing wrote: post #2

Any causes? Is it that we are too independent and don’t like collectivism? A conspiracy might say it’s on purpose to have more people pay for things typically bought for a couple. Like everyone having their own house, cable bill, utility bill, water bill, …

[flagged]

What kind of expectations are these?

Re: 40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

#37

Post by yodsanklai »

whobre wrote: post #17
pavlov wrote: post #7

Is it a bad thing? People's life choices are their own. 29% seems like a fairly neutral number.

People's life choices are their own, but if many people choose to live alone, that objectively affects housing situation in the society.

if so many people can afford to live alone, perhaps it means that housing situation isn't that bad? in cities like NYC where rents are high, it's very common to have roommates for instance.

Re: 40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

#38

Post by hopelite »

lazide wrote: post #11
latexr wrote: post #6

If more people lived together with friends, that’d make a dent in both the housing and loneliness crises.

The issue is the number of people who ‘surprise’ you with out of control behaviors that are a huge issue with room mates. And getting out of living situation with someone like that can be extremely difficult. People can seem perfectly fine, until they seem to spontaneously turn into hoarders, or start eating all your food and lying about it, or start being aggressively in your face about a bunch of antagonistic cultu…

[flagged]

Re: 40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

#39

Post by expedition32 »

xacky wrote: post #26
latexr wrote: post #6

If more people lived together with friends, that’d make a dent in both the housing and loneliness crises.

Then again how many more people would live alone if they could afford to rent or buy on a single income?

Yeah in my country people leave their parents house in their early 20s. Independence and individuality are the foundational bedrock of my culture.

But it's getting harder because of the housing market.

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