Socializing, work and family care in the 2025 American Time Use Survey

The company within different activities

The survey gives us several ways to recognize shared time. Its socializing category includes face-to-face conversation and social functions. A meal belongs under eating and drinking, even when friends share it. Phone calls, texts, and video calls appear in another category. Those definitions matter when we consider what a socializing total represents. It measures particular activities, rather than all contact with other people or how connected anyone felt.

Other leisure activities also changed. Between 2015 and 2025, average time spent playing games or using a computer for leisure rose from 25 to 37 minutes a day. This category includes board games, video games, social media, and other leisure computer use. The increase sits alongside the decline in socializing, but does not establish that one displaced the other. Some of these activities can themselves involve company.

Television remained the largest leisure activity, taking about half of the 5.2 hours of daily leisure recorded across the population. Among teenagers aged 15 to 19, games and leisure computer use occupied about an hour and a half a day. Knowing the activity still leaves a further question about the experience. Playing with a friend, watching something with a partner, and enjoying time alone can all sit within these broad categories.

Where the working day happens

Work location adds another part of the picture. In 2019, 24 percent of employed people did some work at home on days they worked. In 2025, that figure was 35 percent. The share doing some work at their workplace was 82 percent in 2019 and 70 percent in 2025.

These groups overlap because a person can work in both places on the same day. Doing some work at home also does not necessarily mean having a fully remote job. The figures describe where work occurred, which helps us understand why the opportunities to see colleagues in person can differ across working lives.

The time spent working at home changed too. Among people who did some work at home, the average was about five hours on those days in 2025, compared with three hours and sixteen minutes in 2019. This is a different measure from the share working at home. It makes clear why being at home cannot be treated as being available for company, even when the journey to a workplace is absent.

Among workers aged 25 and older, 51 percent of those with a bachelor's degree or higher did some work at home on days worked, compared with 19 percent of high school graduates who had not attended college. Working from home was therefore much more common in some groups than others.

For colleagues who want time together, these patterns give location a practical place in planning. A lunch can coincide with a day people already share a workplace. Where that overlap has changed, keeping the occasion may require an agreement about when and where to meet.

Finding common time within a week

Social occasions remained concentrated around weekends and holidays. People averaged about 26 minutes of socializing on weekdays and 55 minutes on weekends and holidays. The difference shows how much the timing of shared occasions contributes to the national average. Company may occupy a larger part of some days than others.

Paid work followed a different rhythm. About 81 percent of employed people worked on an average weekday, compared with 30 percent on a weekend day or holiday. For many people, a weekend therefore provided more room outside paid work. For a substantial minority, it remained a working day.

The length of weekend work also varied. Among workers aged 25 and older who worked that day, high school graduates with no college averaged 6.4 hours, compared with four hours among those with a bachelor's degree or higher. Degree holders were actually more likely to do some weekend work, 33 percent compared with 28 percent, but their working time on those days was shorter on average.

That combination makes availability more specific than whether someone works weekends. A short period of work and a longer shift leave different possibilities for the rest of the day. Friends arranging a regular gathering can use the hours they actually share, including the time needed to get there, to find an occasion that fits.

More leisure can take many forms

Age differences show why it helps to look inside the leisure total. Adults aged 75 and older averaged 7.4 hours of leisure a day, compared with 3.9 hours among those aged 35 to 44. Yet their socializing estimates were close, about 34 and 35 minutes respectively. Much of the difference was in television viewing, which averaged 4.4 hours in the older group and 1.8 hours in the younger group. A much larger leisure total did not correspond to more recorded socializing.

Family circumstances produced another revealing comparison. Employed adults living with a child under six averaged 3.2 hours of leisure a day, compared with 4.5 hours among employed adults with no children under 18 at home. Their socializing estimates went in the other direction, about 44 minutes and 31 minutes respectively. The group with less leisure recorded more socializing, while spending less time watching television.

These are comparisons between groups, not evidence of what having a child caused. They nevertheless keep an important part of family life visible. Care responsibilities and social occasions can exist within the same day. A smaller amount of leisure tells us something about a person's circumstances, while leaving open how they spend it and what kind of company fits.

The responsibilities that accompany free time

Household work occupied part of that day too. About 87 percent of women and 75 percent of men did household activities on an average day. Among those who did them, women spent about 2.8 hours and men 2.1 hours. These population patterns do not describe the arrangements in any particular home. They make the time spent cooking, cleaning, maintaining a home, and managing its affairs visible alongside the time available for other things.

Childcare brings both direct activity and continuing responsibility. Adults living with a child under six averaged 2.3 hours a day with childcare as their main activity, compared with 47 minutes where the youngest child was aged six to 17. Among adults with a child under six at home, women averaged 2.8 hours and men 1.7 hours. The work included physical care, reading, talking, play, and travel related to children's care.

Responsibility also continued during other activities. Adults living with children under 13 averaged 5.1 hours a day with a child in their care while doing something else. Almost two of those hours overlapped with leisure. That leisure was part of a day in which someone remained responsible for a child, rather than time that was necessarily free of other demands.

The weekend findings make this distinction especially clear. Among adults living with a child under six, primary childcare averaged 2.4 hours on weekdays and two hours on weekends and holidays. Meanwhile, responsibility for a child during other activities rose from 4.2 to 7.7 hours. Less time recorded as direct childcare coincided with many more hours in which care accompanied the rest of life.

A weekend can therefore provide more time for company alongside more hours of responsibility. For a visit to fit, an arrangement might include the children or someone else taking responsibility for their care. Knowing which kind of time people want to share makes the practical conversation more specific.