By R. Gordon Rinderknecht and Isabel Pastoor
Our sense of social connection is related to health and well-being in important ways, and Americans spend an increasing amount of time alone (Kannan & Veazie, 2023). In 2023, U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy declared loneliness to be an epidemic, sparking further media attention and scholarly research on the subject. Nationally representative data on how Americans spend their time is key to understanding the loneliness epidemic, sociability, and people’s social lives more broadly. In this blog post, we discuss the use of American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data from IPUMS to study these topics, including some important limitations for data users. This information was originally presented by R. Gordon Rinderknecht in a webinar supported by IPUMS, the Minnesota Population Center, the Life Course Center, and the Maryland Population Research Center.
IPUMS ATUS provides data from the American Time Use Survey, a nationally representative time diary survey of Americans, from 2003 to present. ATUS data are particularly well-suited for studying social interaction. ATUS respondents report, through an interview, information about their activities over a 24-hour period, including the types of activities they did, who they were with, and where they were. ATUS respondents are a subset of outgoing Current Population Survey (CPS) respondents, and data users can link these two data sources to access rich social, demographic, and economic information from the CPS to complement the time use data. Information on other household members is also available, both directly in the ATUS and from the CPS.
How to leverage the ATUS to study social lives
Activity information
ATUS respondents are asked to report what they did throughout the day. Activities are described by respondents and then classified by interviewers or coders in more detail. Researchers can determine which activities are relevant to their work on social lives. The activity coding scheme has changed to a limited extent over time. All activity codes can be found on the IPUMS ATUS ACTIVITY variable codes page. Users can identify activities using very broad codes or the more detailed codes found on the ACTIVITY variable codes page.
Limitations of activity information
- It is not always possible to identify specific activities that researchers might be interested in because they are collapsed into broader activities. For example, time spent playing video games, which is often a virtual social activity, cannot be distinguished from time playing a card game alone. These activities are both coded as “playing games.”
- In an increasingly virtual world, virtual communication and interaction with others that occurs in the background of main activities is an important part of social behavior that researchers may want to capture. These types of secondary activities are typically not captured well in the ATUS.
“With whom” information
Information on who the ATUS respondent was with is reported for all time diary activities. Respondents can report that they spent time alone, or with other specified people (e.g., spouse, household child, co-worker, friend, neighbor). These details can be used to determine how much time people spend alone versus with others, as well as how much time they spend with various categories of people, like family members. Activities the respondent did with household members specify which household member (LINENOW), allowing researchers to observe time spent with a specific person across multiple time use episodes, and observe characteristics of the household member, many of which are reported in the CPS and appended to household members’ ATUS records (e.g., age, sex, race).
Limitations of “with whom” information
- When the respondent was with a non-household member, that person’s characteristics are not known, and it is not possible to identify other time use episodes that occurred with the same person. For example, it is not possible to determine whether an ATUS respondent who watched a movie with a friend, and then went to the park with a friend, was with the same friend or two different friends.
- The “with whom” measures do not characterize the level, type, or duration of actual engagement with the person the respondent was with. A married couple may eat dinner together at a restaurant in silence, both looking at their phones. This time use episode would be measured as time with a spouse, though the spouses did not interact. Active versus passive engagement with someone is associated with how lonely someone feels during an activity (Rinderknecht, Doan, & Sayer, 2021).
- These data capture in-person co-presence only, and do not capture digitally-mediated co-presence.
Location information
For each activity the ATUS respondent engaged in, the location of the activity is reported. Some of these locations provide implicit information about socializing. There is concern that the recent decline in socialization is partly attributable to a decline in the availability of and time spent in “third places,” i.e., places that are not home or work that function as public gathering spots. Time spent at home increased sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic (Sharkey, 2024).
Limitations of location information
- Some argue that online locations can be third places too (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006; McArthur & White, 2016; Kim et al., 2026). But as discussed in the activity information limitations above, time use in digital third places is not always captured.
- Collapsing multiple locations into broader location categories can result in insufficient detail to study a particular place, or even distinguish between time outdoors and time indoors.
Wellbeing information
In select ATUS samples, information was collected on how respondents felt during three randomly-selected eligible time use episodes per respondent. Respondents report, on a Likert-style scale, their levels of pain, happiness, sadness, fatigue, stress, and meaningfulness. These wellbeing module variables, which are available via IPUMS ATUS, allow researchers to understand the association between feelings and factors like time of day, duration, location, type of activity, and who the respondent was with. The wellbeing module also includes an underutilized question that asks whether the respondent was interacting with anyone during the activity, including on the phone. This question captures respondents’ subjective understanding of interaction, and is not tied to physical location.
Limitations of wellbeing information
- Since the wellbeing module is only part of a few ATUS samples, sample size can easily become an issue.
- Understanding trends over time is also difficult with the limited number of data points.
- Only three episodes per respondent have wellbeing information. This limits sample size and statistical power, especially for less common activities.
Despite these limitations, these measures of wellbeing are valuable, and well-suited for coarser analyses. For example, Folk and Dunn (2025) compare the reported wellbeing of ATUS respondents when they are versus are not interacting with other people across a large number of activities, and find that people feel better when they are interacting with others.
Analytical considerations and resources
- Time spent alone does not necessarily capture feelings of loneliness. While it’s clear that time spent alone has increased over time—not just in the U.S. but around the world—the evidence on loneliness is more mixed, and trends in loneliness may differ considerably by demographics.
- Weights must be used to produce representative estimates using survey data, including ATUS data.
- The IPUMS ATUS custom time use variable builder allows users to create custom person-level time use variables, appended to person records, that summarize information about time use. Users can sum time spent on activities and place restrictions on which activities they want to include, including restrictions on activity type, time of day, location, with whom, and secondary activity.
- IPUMS users can analyze data online without creating a data file using the IPUMS ATUS online data analysis tool. Stay tuned for a new feature that will allow users to analyze a custom data extract using the online tool.
- IPUMS data training exercises walk users through basic analyses of IPUMS ATUS data.