Working from home is making young Brits lonelier than screen time: New research
Key Points
- Young men aged 18-29 in the UK spent six and a half hours a day alone in 2023, two hours more than in 2014-15
- Young women in the same age bracket spend around five hours a day alone, up one and a half hours
- Paid work, not leisure screen time, was the biggest driver of the increase, with working from home accounting for around two-thirds of the rise in solo work
- Adults aged 18-29 report feeling lonely 14% of the time, double the rate of 60-69-year-olds
- Older Britons are alone less than a decade ago, reversing the generational pattern
Young men in the UK spent six and a half hours a day alone in 2023, two hours more than in 2014-15, according to Resolution Foundation research published on Wednesday (12 August).
That figure amounts to more than two-fifths of their waking hours. Young women aged 18-29 now spend roughly five hours a day alone, an increase of one and a half hours on the same period.
Older age groups moved in the opposite direction, with women over 60 and men over 70 spending around one to one and a half fewer hours a day alone than a decade earlier.
The research, titled All by myself, analysed diary data tracking how people in the UK spend their day. The Economic and Social Research Council-funded Connecting Generations research programme supported the work.
Adults aged 18-29 reported feeling lonely 14% of the time, twice the rate of 60-69-year-olds, who reported 7%. Time online carries some of the weight.
Among 18-29-year-olds who are almost always online, 16% reported loneliness, compared with 12% of those who are not — a gap of nearly four percentage points.
Paid work drove the increase more than leisure screen time did.
Across all working-age adults, work was the single biggest contributor to the extra hours spent alone since the mid-2010s, and working from home accounted for roughly two-thirds of the rise in work done by yourself.
Men aged 18-29 now spend one and a half hours a day more working alone than they did in the mid-2010s.
Health and the policy question
The report links the shift to health outcomes. People aged 18-29 who reported being in bad health in 2023 spent three more hours a day alone than the same age group did in 2014-15. Older age groups showed no equivalent pattern.
The report notes that some time alone can be restorative, but flags negative implications for health and wellbeing where the hours are not chosen.
It argues that increases driven by paid work leave individuals with less control than increases driven by leisure, and that time use therefore belongs in wider conversations about intergenerational inequality.
“Young adults are now spending more time alone than they did a decade ago, with men aged 18-29 in particular now alone for more than two-fifths of their waking hours,” said Parth Pandya, Researcher at the Resolution Foundation.
“Screen time is the usual suspect in conversations about the rise in loneliness among young people, but time spent doing paid work by themselves was the biggest driver of rising hours spent alone, with working from home – a legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic – accounting for the majority of this.”
“If policy makers are serious about improving young people’s wellbeing, then work needs to be part of the debate as much as screen time.”
