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More Americans Are Living Alone

In his book Going Solo, sociologist Eric Klinenberg noted the following statistics about the new trend of living alone:

  • 32 million Americans live alone, representing 28 percent of all households.
  • In prosperous American cities — Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Minneapolis — 40 percent or more of all households contain a single occupant.
  • Five million people in the United States between ages 18 and 34 live alone, 10 times more than in 1950.
  • The largest category of single people is the middle-aged group (ages 35-64).
  • The U.S. is not unique. In Paris, half of all households contain single people, and in Stockholm, the rate tops 60 percent.

In summary, when people can afford to live alone, more tend to do so.

Klinenberg also notes that this trend spills over into families that do not live alone. He writes: "Those in large suburban homes often splinter into private rooms to be alone. The image of a modern family in a room together, each plugged into a separate reality, be it a smartphone, computer, video game or TV show has become a cultural cliché."

According to Klineberg, "going solo" is largely a positive trend, but some social observers disagree. For instance, Mark T. Mitchell, a professor at Patrick Henry College cautions that this trend has some potential downsides. Mitchell writes:

There is an obvious attraction here. After all, this new way of living makes it possible to dramatically limit encounters with all but the people we choose to see. One can avoid the inconveniences of a difficult roommate or a less than perfect spouse. My time and space are my own and I need to share only when I choose to go out or let someone else in …..
[But] living alone can lead to a disposition that I am center of the universe …. If I live alone, when I eat, sleep, brush my teeth, and exercise I must ask leave of no one and can do exactly as I please …. I don't have to get up in the night to help a sick roommate or spouse … fetch a glass of water, or get an extra blanket to stave off the chills of fever …. My schedule is my own and my life is arranged so that I need to defer to no one …. Perhaps when God observed that it is not good for man to be alone, he was not referring merely to the fact that humans need companionship but that the temptation to focus exclusively on the self would increase exponentially in the absence of another person with whom to share space and time.

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