The Death of Partying in the U.S.A.—and Why It Matters

In January, The Atlantic's Ellen Cushing published an essay with an admirably blunt title: “Americans Need to Party More.” Burrowing into the appendix tables of the American Time Use Survey, she unearthed the fact that just 4.1 percent of Americans said they “attended or hosted” a party or ceremony on a typical weekend or holiday in 2023. In other words, in any given weekend, just one in 25 US households had plans to attend a social event. The ATUS is a government questionnaire that asks a large sample of Americans how much time they spend doing just about everything, including sleeping, working, grooming themselves, playing with their pets, and going to parties. The latest ATUS estimates were published last month. The results emphatically affirm Cushing’s diagnosis: America’s social calendar is bare. Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time that Americans spent attending or hosting a social event declined by 50 percent. Almost every age group cut their party time in half in the last

In January, The Atlantic's Ellen Cushing published an essay with an admirably blunt title: “Americans Need to Party More.” Burrowing into the appendix tables of the American Time Use Survey, she unearthed the fact that just 4.1 percent of Americans said they “attended or hosted” a party or ceremony on a typical weekend or holiday in 2023. In other words, in any given weekend, just one in 25 US households had plans to attend a social event. The ATUS is a government questionnaire that asks a large sample of Americans how much time they spend doing just about everything, including sleeping, worki