top of page

Staying In: Did Pandemic Shift Americans' Leisure-Time Habits Permanently?

THURSDAY, Oct. 31, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have created a nation of homebodies in the United States, a new study finds.

People are spending nearly an hour less each day doing activities outside the home, researchers reported Oct. 31 in the Journal of the American Planning Association.

In essence, not going out has become the “new normal” post-COVID, experts say.

Since 2019, there’s been an overall drop of about 51 minutes in the daily time spent on out-of-home activities, researchers found.

People also spend about 12 minutes less time on daily travel in cars or public transportation.

This decrease in time spent away from home appears to be a lasting consequence of the pandemic, researchers said, and it will affect society on many levels.

For example, cities will need to rethink their dependence on folks who commute in for their workdays, noted the researchers, who are urban planners.

“In a world where cities cannot rely on captive office workers and must work to attract residents, workers and customers, local officials might seek to invest more heavily in their remaining strengths,” said lead study author Eric Morris, a professor of city and regional planning at Clemson University in South Carolina.

“These include opportunities for recreation, entertainment, culture, arts and more,” Morris added in a journal news release. “Central cities might shift toward becoming centers of consumption more than production.”

For the study, researchers analyzed data from 34,000 Americans who participated in the American Time Use Survey, an annual review conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. 

The team grouped time use into 16 home-based activities like sleep, exercise and work, as well as 12 out-of-home activities like arts and sporting events, shopping, work and attending church.

Time spent on 8 of the 12 out-of-home activities fell between 2019 and 2021, while 11 of the 16 in-home activities gained time, results showed.

The average time for out-of-home activities fell from about 5.5 hours a day in 2019 to 4.5 hours in 2021, researchers found.

They also found that time spent away from home has only modestly recovered following the pandemic, rebounding by just 11 minutes from 2021 to 2023.

All out-of-home time, all forms of travel and seven out-of-home activities remained notably lower in 2023 than 2019, while eight in-home activities remained higher, researchers said.

Improvements in information technology is one of the key drivers in this trend, researchers found. Shopping is easier and quicker online at home; streaming allows people to watch movies at their leisure.

People also are performing more exercise at home, because many bought in-home gym equipment during lockdowns and social distancing.

As a result of all this, city centers might focus on creating dense multiunit housing favored by younger people and those who prefer an urban lifestyle, researchers said.

Likewise, transportation policies might do better to focus on pedestrian and cyclist safety, rather than building more lanes to accommodate rush-hour travel, researchers said.

More information

The World Economic Forum has more on how the pandemic changed society.

SOURCE: Taylor & Francis Group, news release, Oct. 31, 2024

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

More Kids With Food Allergies Are Needing Psychological Care

THURSDAY, Oct. 24, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Anxiety is driving more children with potentially dangerous food allergies to seek out psychological care, a new study finds.

Focusing on one Ohio hospital, the researchers found a more than 50% jump in psychology referrals for kids with food allergies between 2018 and 2023.

“Our center has devoted significant resources to address the psychosocial support needed by many families who have children with food allergies,” said study lead author Dr. Andriana La Mantia, a pediatrician at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

“Our goal in this study was to characterize use of these services for food allergy-related anxiety," La Mantia said in a news release from the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI).

Her team presented its findings Thursday at the ACAAI annual meeting in Boston.

Food allergies can bring the specter of analphylaxis: A sudden, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction to even small amounts of the food allergen. Anxiety around preventing these incidents and trauma resulting from anaphylactic episodes can harm a child's mental health.

“Food allergy patients, particularly children, often suffer from anxiety related to potential accidental ingestion and anaphylaxis,” said study co-author Dr. David Stukus, director of the Food Allergy Treatment Center at Nationwide Children's Hospital.

In the new study, the Columbus team reviewed the cases of 250 kids with food allergies, who averaged 9.5 years of age.

Many were allergic to more than one food; the average number of food allergens was two per patient.

More than half (53%) had already had at least one episode of anaphylaxis, the researchers found, and more than two-thirds (69%) said they suffered anxiety linked to their allergy.

About 1 in every 10 of the children (12%) said they had so much allergy-linked anxiety that it caused real declines in their quality of life.

Of those who opted for professional psychological help, 60% of those referred completed at least one appointment and the average patient got more than five appointments over the following year, the study found.

All of this is an important advance in the treatment of children with dangerous allergies, Stukus said.

“Expanding psychological services for these patients is an important part of how we try to support families to live normal lives while balancing food allergy management," he added.

Because these findings were presented at a medical meeting, they should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

Find out more about food allergies at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

SOURCE: American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, news release, Oct. 24, 2024

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

One Day of the Week Has Highest Suicide Risk

THURSDAY, Oct. 24, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- A “case of the Mondays” is more perilous than just the return-to-work blues, a new study warns.

Suicide risk is highest on Monday in the United States and around the world, an international team of researchers has discovered.

“Mondays and New Year’s Day were both associated with increased suicide risk in most countries,” concluded the team led by Yoonhee Kim, an associate professor with the University of Tokyo's Department of Global Environmental Health.

Mondays constitute 15% to 18% of total suicides, compared with other days, researchers found.

Results also show that weekend suicide risk varies greatly between countries.

Suicide risk is lowest on Saturdays or Sundays in many countries across North America, Asia and Europe. However, suicide risk increases during the weekend in South and Central American Countries, Finland and South Africa.

For the study, researchers analyzed suicide data for 740 locations in 26 countries and territories from 1971 to 2019, including more than 1.7 million suicides.

Previous studies have shown that suicide risk differs by day of the week, but results have been inconsistent, researchers said in background notes.

Suicide risk increased on New Year’s Day in all countries, especially in men, the results showed.

The researchers said there are several potential explanations for the increased suicide risk on Mondays and New Year’s Day.

One is the “broken-promise effect theory,” which holds that people experience a negative mood when things don’t go as planned. In essence, a bad weekend or a trying year causes an intense feeling of depression or despair that increases suicide risk.

The beginning of the week might also increase work pressure and stress, a phenomenon called “Blue Monday,” researchers said.

It also could be that people drink more on the weekends and on New Year’s Day, which is considered a major risk factor for suicide, researchers added.

“Notably, our study showed that men who died by suicide were more affected by the day of the week and New Year’s Day compared with women,” the researchers wrote.


The new study was published Oct. 23 in the BMJ.

Men are more susceptible to isolation and stress, while women typically have a bigger and more diverse social support system, researchers said.

If you or a loved one are experiencing a suicidal crisis or emotional distress call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on risk factors for suicide.

SOURCE: BMJ Group, news release, Oct. 23, 2024

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

bottom of page