Unmarried and Increasingly Alone: Solitary Leisure Among Unmarried, Solo Dwelling Americans, 1965 to 2018

Journal article

Remaining unmarried and living alone are becoming more common in Western countries, including the U.S. Prior research has focused on the social lives of these individuals, but it has not focused on how their social lives may be changing. Thus, how the sociality of unmarried adults living alone has changed over time remains unclear. Our analysis examines how social isolation during leisure has changed over six decades, and we assess if such isolation has disproportionately grown among unmarried, solo dwelling Americans. We use six waves of the American Heritage Time Use Study, a harmonized collection of nationally representative time diary datasets spanning 1965 to 2018, and we focus on respondents aged 19 to 65. After adjusting for demographic changes, we find that leisure time spent alone has grown by 118 minutes per day among unmarried solo dwellers, while only growing 40 minutes for others. Further, co-present leisure has fallen by 41 minutes among unmarried solo dwellers while remaining largely unchanged for others. We conclude by discussing the potential consequences of such changes for well-being, as well as highlight the measurement innovations necessary for future time use research to capture the varied ways people socialize in recent decades.

Authors: Rinderknecht, RG; Negraia, DV; Lohmann, S; Zagheni, E

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer
• Journal: Social Indicators Research
• Volume: 182
• Issue: 2
• Article number: 32
• Publication date: 2026-03-27
• Acceptance date: 2026-03-12
• DOI: 10.1007/s11205-026-03838-4
• EISSN: 1573-0921
• ISSN: 0303-8300
• Language: English
• Keywords: Time spent alone; America; Social isolation; Marital status; Time use