Who We Spend Time With, by Age

About This Chart

Data Visualization Method

• Data: Self-reported time-diary responses from the American Time Use Survey, in which people recall the previous day's activities and who was with them. The per-age values are population-weighted averages reconstructed from the survey's activity, respondent, and companion files — not a table published directly by the statistical agency.
• Period and area: The United States, pooling 2010–2024 with 2020 removed (its collection was interrupted that year and is not nationally representative). Ages run from 15 to 80, where 80 combines the 80–84 group; figures are for all people, sexes combined.
• Selection: Six companion categories — alone, partner, children, family, friends, coworkers. An "other" group (neighbors, acquaintances, clients, and other non-relatives) is excluded, along with unknown and not-applicable cases. Activities the survey never asks a companion about, such as sleeping and personal care, fall outside this measure.
• Processing: Each activity is matched to its companions; a category is counted once per activity even when several such people were present; each respondent's daily minutes are summed, including zeros for companions they spent no time with; values are then averaged by age using the survey's final weights and converted to hours per day. No smoothing, interpolation, or reading of values off an image was applied.
• Chart form: A grid of small multiples — one panel per relationship, all sharing a common 0–8 hour vertical scale. Splitting the lines apart keeps each relationship's arc legible on its own while holding every panel directly comparable.

Creator's Note

The aim was to place the day's companions on a single comparable scale across the whole age range, and to give each relationship its own panel rather than crowd six lines into one frame. Separated this way, each arc — the rise, the peak, the fade — can be read on its own while still lining up against the others.

The most persistent pattern is time spent alone, which climbs steadily from about 3.7 hours a day in the mid-teens to nearly 8 hours by the early eighties, while time with children peaks in the late thirties and time with coworkers fades toward retirement. The author's reading is that the value here is the comparison itself — how the mix shifts across a life — rather than a ranking of which relationship comes out ahead. What that shape means for any one person is a separate question, and the notes below are careful to bound it.

Data Sources

• Our World in Data — Who Americans spend their time with, by age — the final per-age values for the six relationship series.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — American Time Use Survey— the underlying microdata: respondent age, activity duration, who-was-present codes, and survey weights.
• Our World in Data — processing code — the category grouping, zero-inclusion, weighting, and 2020 exclusion, for anyone reproducing the figures.

Limitations

These figures are for the United States and do not stand in for life patterns in Korea or the world at large. They also come from a cross-section, not a cohort: different age groups surveyed across many years, rather than the same people followed over time. Differences between ages therefore reflect not only what changes with age but also differences between the generations being compared, so the chart cannot support a claim that aging itself causes any of these shifts.

The measure counts physical co-presence — who was in the same place — and not contact by phone, text, or video call. Activities the survey never attaches a companion to, such as sleep and personal care, are left out, so the six lines are not a full breakdown of the 24-hour day and do not add up to it. The categories can also overlap, since one activity might involve a partner and a friend at once, and the excluded "other" group is not shown; the panels should not be summed.

Each line is an average across everyone at a given age, and sample sizes and uncertainty ranges are not part of the published values. Single-year points at the oldest ages should not be read too precisely, 80 stands in for the 80–84 range, and 2020 is absent, so the unusual early-pandemic period is not reflected.

What This Chart Doesn't Show

It does not measure closeness, relationship quality, loneliness, or satisfaction. Time recorded as spent alone is not the same as being lonely, and time with someone says nothing here about how that time felt — the survey notes only who was physically present.

Each panel is also an average over everyone at that age, including people with no partner, no children, or no job, all counted as zero hours. A line is therefore not how much time people who have a partner spend with them, but the average across the entire age group. And because the chart is a snapshot of many ages at once, it cannot trace any single person's path through life; it appears to show a lifetime, but it is really many different lives seen at one moment.