40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

32 pointsposted 6 hours ago
by helsinkiandrew

73 Comments

JumpCrisscross

5 hours ago

When I was a twentysomething, I had roommates. This saved money on rent and bulk purchases (which let me spend more time having fun and save money) and provided a starter-kit social circle in a new city. It also honed conflict-resolution skills and ability to be civil. And when I got a partner, it made moving in together smoother.

Something I’ve noticed recently is many college graduates living alone. That’s fine. But it’s a weird default for early in one’s career. If I had one general piece of advice for anyone starting their career, it would be to seek out a living situation with roommates.

Side question: are more college students staying in solo dorms?

ASalazarMX

an hour ago

Living alone is awesome, but I also had roommates while in university, and despite our differences, that was awesome too, it would have sucked to be alone.

I guess living alone can be a sound decision, but it depends on context.

cj

4 hours ago

oh man, you just gave me a flashback to my roommates a decade ago changing my WiFi router password since they thought I was working too much. That was not my finest moment as far as practicing conflict resolution goes :)

But that’s also the point. Low risk situation to practice things that later in life become much higher risk. Better to figure out how to cohabitate with a few random roommates than a SO down the road.

latexr

5 hours ago

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

whywhywhywhy

5 hours ago

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.

JumpCrisscross

5 hours ago

> Someone you can stand being around all day is very different than someone you really enjoy spending a few hours a month with

One is a friend. The other an acquaintance.

SketchySeaBeast

3 hours ago

Nah, the differences that can make for a dynamic friendship can be the ones that prevent cohabitation. If you're friends you don't have to care that they like to play loud music at 2 am, but you do when you live together.

I have/had friends whose pickiness/slovenliness was fine until we tried to live together, and then all that became a personality clash. It's entirely possible to have strong friendships with people you couldn't live with.

xacky

5 hours ago

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

expedition32

5 hours ago

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.

latexr

5 hours ago

> Independence and individuality

Neither are threatened by living with a friend or someone else near your age. Sure, move out of your parents’ home, but that doesn’t mean you have to live alone.

JumpCrisscross

4 hours ago

> Neither are threatened by living with a friend or someone else near your age

The difference between sharing a 2BR and living in an apartment building are more exercises in cultural than physical difference.

rickydroll

5 hours ago

You know how you can tell if you have a really good friend? They will help you dispose of your roommate's body, 24 by 7, no questions asked.

latexr

5 hours ago

They might have one question: “How much is the rent and when can I move in?”

JumpCrisscross

5 hours ago

Both directly, by providing a social circle, and indirectly, by training people to live with a partner.

lapcat

5 hours ago

Part of the loneliness crisis is the difficulty of making friends.

This reminds me, yesterday I was walking down the hallway of my apartment building, and one of my neighbors passed by me but neglected to even acknowledge my existence, because their head was down staring at their smartphone.

latexr

4 hours ago

> Part of the loneliness crisis is the difficulty of making friends.

Sharing a house is a good way to combat that. Sometimes you move in with people you tangentially know. Sometimes you won’t be huge friends with them but can still interact, or may even meet some of their friends and hit it off.

lazide

5 hours ago

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 culture bullshit, etc.

I think what we’re seeing is Americans increasingly fed up with (or even terrified of) other Americans.

latexr

5 hours ago

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.

lazide

4 hours ago

Except for a very, very small number of people, everyone I've ever known who can afford to not have room mates - doesn't have room mates. Young or old.

There is a reason for this, and it isn't because they hate their mental health.

The issue here is how hard it is to protect your own mental health when someone else refuses to respect yours, and how a co-living situation can make that hard - because you literally are all up in each others business.

latexr

2 hours ago

> and it isn't because they hate their mental health.

No, of course not. But that doesn’t also mean it can’t have an effect. Social media is harmful to many of us who still partake. Sometimes what we do isn’t what’s best. Some of those people who live alone could benefit from living with someone else, others might not. It’s not an absolute, just worth considering.

> The issue here is how hard it is to protect your own mental health when someone else refuses to respect yours

Right, but I feel too many people are focusing on dipshit housemates. Good and understanding people do exist. Like, would you be one of those disrespectful people you describe? Probably not, which proves people like you do exist.

soulofmischief

5 hours ago

I moved in with one of my closest friends a few years ago, someone I considered a brother. In less than a year, I got someone to sublet and have not spoken to him since. I had no idea someone could be such a tool.

hopelite

5 hours ago

[flagged]

mindslight

2 hours ago

If this is true, then why does it seem like the places with the least diversity are full of people Hell-bent on directly destroying the country?

There's some truth in what you're saying regarding social cohesion, but you're skipping some very important steps like the media fanning reactionary flames by scaring rural dwellers that "diversity" is going to come for them, etc.

Meanwhile people who are confronted with actual diversity in their day to day lives are less likely to buy into such simplistic and destructive narratives in the first place.

This implies that the lack of social cohesion is better thought of as a result of hostile media convincing everyone they are under attack by some "other", than slightly different humans in people's real-life communities.

hopelite

5 hours ago

It’s something europeans don’t yet understand, that “diversity” has utterly destroyed community, trust, and tranquility in the US; mostly because it has been forced upon people against their will in direct contradiction of the core tenets of the Constitution and founding principles of America.

I realize hearing that or seeing that others may read that, may anger people who are deeply invested in the fraud that diversity is good, but all the legitimate research into the topic all tells us the same thing; that “diversity” is detrimental to any and all human communities all around the world, even for the very group that pushes it on others while aggressively rejecting it for themselves and their own.

edit: No amount of downvoting will change reality, whether you shoot the messenger or not. It's a shame, because good does not actually prevail, especially with brainwashed fools who assist those seeking the demise of others. Support of "diversity" is no different than the support of the genocide the jewish state committed and is to this day still committing in Gaza... the support of evil without the intelligence to understand that.

adammmmm

3 hours ago

What is this legitimate research you speak of? Will you please provide sources?

gniv

5 hours ago

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

onlyrealcuzzo

5 hours ago

But it is one of the largest drivers for increased housing demand.

auggierose

5 hours ago

Interesting that UK is not in the top 10 list. Because of more ethnic diversity, or because they cannot afford single households?

notahacker

5 hours ago

Rare to live alone in London, even amongst single thirtysomething professionals earning well above median income.

user

5 hours ago

[deleted]

xnx

4 hours ago

Part of the "housing crisis" is older Americans aging-in-place and using way more home than they need too. A widow/er might occupy the same suburban single family home in retirement that could house 5 people.

CalRobert

3 hours ago

Even as new homes are much bigger than decades past…

pavlov

5 hours ago

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

29% seems like a fairly neutral number.

mellosouls

5 hours ago

It's a bad thing if we want a cohesive society or if we wish to maximise well-being (both of which are challenged by people increasing their exposure to solitude and loneliness); and your claim about life choices is only partially true - we are all constrained/guided by genetic and environmental factors.

throw0101a

5 hours ago

> 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

pavlov

5 hours ago

Perhaps the number was artificially low before, and more people actually wanted to live on their own. Loneliness is not the same thing as a one-person household.

I'm not seeing evidence that 15% is the correct number and 29% is automatically bad.

latexr

5 hours ago

> Is it a bad thing?

Considering there are both housing and loneliness crises going on, and that being lonely or socially isolated leads to an early death and radicalisation, I’d say it’s fair to categorise it as a bad thing, yes.

Sure, not every single one of those people living alone will be lonely, but I think it’s fair to deduce that many people who are lonely and isolated live alone.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/19/health/loneliness-social-isol...

https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/other/21402/Delany%...

JumpCrisscross

5 hours ago

I’d wager it also feeds into the fertility crisis. Roommates are a training ground for living with a partner and potentially family. If someone is living with a non-parent for the first time in their late twenties, there may already be habits or intolerances developed that make dating incredibly difficult.

bragh

5 hours ago

The phrasing in your sources is absolutely horrible and brings back high school vibes of "lonely kids are bad because they are lonely, so they must be bullied to make them normal again". Just great.

whobre

5 hours ago

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

yodsanklai

5 hours ago

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.

gilrain

5 hours ago

> People's life choices are their own.

Only a king or simpleton believes this.

kevinpacheco

5 hours ago

If you own shares in e.g. Costco, a long-term sustained trend of shrinking household sizes might give you pause.

lm28469

5 hours ago

> People's life choices are their own.

How do you know it's by choice?

mindslight

2 hours ago

It's utterly terrible regarding the issues of housing availability, settling down to start our own families, and elder care. The multi-generation pattern is that the grandparents watch the kids while the middle generation does useful work - the grandparents supervise the kids, while the kids keep the grandparents entertained. Then when the kids get old enough, they help supervise the grandparents.

I think we could naturally fall back into this pattern as housing, elder, and child care continue to get ever more expensive... but for the fact that the baseline suburban house is built with a single common living space, meant for a single family all constantly interacting with each other. You have to get into much more expensive houses with "in-law apartments" and whatnot before you regain the breathing room to have multiple generations living together. And now even houses with that extra space have become economic-grindstone legible due to short term rentals.

expedition32

5 hours ago

It triggers conservatives and Christians who believe in the nuclear family and biblical lifestyle. They despise liberty and agency.

RobotToaster

5 hours ago

Is this page just a single chart and a massive legal disclaimer?

b3ing

6 hours ago

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, …

tyleo

5 hours ago

After college, I intentionally lived with roommates. The three of us were doing well, having secured jobs at Microsoft and Amazon.

Even so, splitting rent, utilities, and furniture was a significant financial advantage and helped set us up for long-term success.

We had our disagreements, and eventually a falling out with one roommate, but I’d do it all again. The other roommate and I are life long friends and you learn lessons and form bonds in addition to the financial benefit.

nemomarx

5 hours ago

The American tendency to move away from family earlier is probably involved.

user

5 hours ago

[deleted]

jltsiren

5 hours ago

The population is growing older. Young adults rarely live alone, while retirees often do. There are more old people than there used to be, and people often want to continue living in their own home after their spouse dies.

lm28469

5 hours ago

> too independent

individualistic

g-b-r

5 hours ago

Probably most of all the increase of the age of marriage

Cthulhu_

5 hours ago

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.

g-b-r

4 hours ago

Also, but I think that most of all there used to be pressure to get married early

booleandilemma

5 hours ago

[flagged]

lm28469

5 hours ago

> Unrealistic expectations from women

And men too... lots of them stay adolescent well into their 30s and require a caregiver or a substitute mom more than a gf/wife. Men exclusively blaming women for their problems tend to be basement dwellers or other kind of failures who don't want to take any responsibility

bragh

5 hours ago

> lots of them stay adolescent well into their 30s and require a caregiver or a substitute mom more than a gf/wife

What do you actually mean by this part?

lm28469

3 hours ago

They need someone to cook their meals, clean their bedroom, &c. while they spend their whole day on low life activities, they want to be 16 forever and live like when they had a mom to take care of the "annoying" things.

I know people my age (30+) who spend 8 hours a day gaming and the rest of their free time collecting pokemon cards, funkopops, scifi books they never read and have the audacity to complain about women not being """traditional""" anymore. They're basically out of shape teenagers with money, and they don't understand why it's not attractive. Some of them actually do live with their parents.

Cthulhu_

5 hours ago

What kind of expectations are these?

g-b-r

5 hours ago

Want to clarify what you mean?

booleandilemma

5 hours ago

What I wrote is pretty self-explanatory. It may not be something that everyone likes to hear though.

rexpop

5 hours ago

What you wrote was vague as hell.

user

3 hours ago

[deleted]