Americans are choosing to be alone. Here
[READ IN FULL AT SOURCE. NOT A STUDY: this is a newspaper opinion column with no method, no table, no code and no peer review, and it must never be cited as a paper] Ward, B. (2022). 'Americans are choosing to be alone. Here's why we should reverse that.' The Washington Post, opinion section, 23 November 2022. Ward is described in the column's own biographical line as an economist and the founder of ABMJ Consulting. THIS IS THE TERMINUS OF THE SEED BOOK'S FIGURE AND THE VERIFICATION THE VAULT PUT ON THE QUEUE. His claim: according to the American Time Use Survey, the average American's time with friends was stable at about six and a half hours a week from 2010 to 2013, began to fall in 2014, and by 2019 stood at only four hours a week, a 37 percent decline in five years. FURTHER FIGURES IN THE COLUMN: two hours forty-five minutes a week in 2021, a 58 per cent decline on 2010 to 2013; on a broader definition including neighbours, co-workers and clients, 15 hours a week a decade earlier, 12 in 2019 and 10 in 2021; Americans spent 38 per cent less time with friends and extended family over the Thanksgiving weekend in the past two years than a decade prior; the lost time went to being alone rather than to spouses, partners or children; and the percentage declines are similar across sex, race, income, urban and rural, married and unmarried, parents and non-parents, and remote and in-person workers. WHERE THE TRACE STOPS: at an opinion column. Ward is a real economist analysing a real federal survey and he publishes no method, no table, no code and no peer review. There is no paper. The figure cannot be checked against a published computation, only against the column. IT IS NOT A FABRICATED STATISTIC AND IT IS NOT A VERIFIED ONE. IT IS AN UNCHECKABLE ONE, and the distinction matters because this is the respectable end of the same problem as the eight-second attention-span figure. TWO FURTHER THINGS: his attribution sentence is an unsourced causal assertion sitting in a descriptive analysis, in which he lists social media, political polarization and new technologies as contributors and notes in a parenthesis that smartphone market penetration crossed 50 percent in 2014, and that parenthesis is a coincidence of dates offered as a hint, so this publication does not carry it. And a small accuracy point: the American Time Use Survey is conducted by the Census Bureau FOR the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which publishes it, so 'the Census Bureau's' survey is loose. The column also names adolescent mental health among possible consequences, and that part is out of scope here and is not used. LIVING PERSON: the point is that an opinion column is not a paper, which is a fact about a publication venue and not a criticism of an economist.
[READ IN FULL AT SOURCE. NOT A STUDY: this is a newspaper opinion column with no method, no table, no code and no peer review, and it must never be cited as a paper] Ward, B. (2022). 'Americans are choosing to be alone. Here's why we should reverse that.' The Washington Post, opinion section, 23 November 2022. Ward is described in the column's own biographical line as an economist and the founder of ABMJ Consulting. THIS IS THE TERMINUS OF THE SEED BOOK'S FIGURE AND THE VERIFICATION THE VAULT PUT ON THE QUEUE. His claim: according to the American Time Use Survey, the average American's time with friends was stable at about six and a half hours a week from 2010 to 2013, began to fall in 2014, and by 2019 stood at only four hours a week, a 37 percent decline in five years. FURTHER FIGURES IN THE COLUMN: two hours forty-five minutes a week in 2021, a 58 per cent decline on 2010 to 2013; on a broader definition including neighbours, co-workers and clients, 15 hours a week a decade earlier, 12 in 2019 and 10 in 2021; Americans spent 38 per cent less time with friends and extended family over the Thanksgiving weekend in the past two years than a decade prior; the lost time went to being alone rather than to spouses, partners or children; and the percentage declines are similar across sex, race, income, urban and rural, married and unmarried, parents and non-parents, and remote and in-person workers. WHERE THE TRACE STOPS: at an opinion column. Ward is a real economist analysing a real federal survey and he publishes no method, no table, no code and no peer review. There is no paper. The figure cannot be checked against a published computation, only against the column. IT IS NOT A FABRICATED STATISTIC AND IT IS NOT A VERIFIED ONE. IT IS AN UNCHECKABLE ONE, and the distinction matters because this is the respectable end of the same problem as the eight-second attention-span figure. TWO FURTHER THINGS: his attribution sentence is an unsourced causal assertion sitting in a descriptive analysis, in which he lists social media, political polarization and new technologies as contributors and notes in a parenthesis that smartphone market penetration crossed 50 percent in 2014, and that parenthesis is a coincidence of dates offered as a hint, so this publication does not carry it. And a small accuracy point: the American Time Use Survey is conducted by the Census Bureau FOR the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which publishes it, so 'the Census Bureau's' survey is loose. The column also names adolescent mental health among possible consequences, and that part is out of scope here and is not used. LIVING PERSON: the point is that an opinion column is not a paper, which is a fact about a publication venue and not a criticism of an economist.
Written from the rEAD IN FULL AT SOURCE. NOT A STUDY: this is a newspaper opinion column with no method, no table, no code and no peer review, and it must never be cited as a paper.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
s why we should reverse that.' The Washington Post, 23 November 2022