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40M Americans Live Alone, 29% of households

2026-01-2212:1859103www.apolloacademy.com

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Comments

  • By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-2213:133 reply

    When I was a twentysomething, I had roommates. This saved money on rent and bulk purchases (which let me spend more time having fun and save money) and provided a starter-kit social circle in a new city. It also honed conflict-resolution skills and ability to be civil. And when I got a partner, it made moving in together smoother.

    Something I’ve noticed recently is many college graduates living alone. That’s fine. But it’s a weird default for early in one’s career. If I had one general piece of advice for anyone starting their career, it would be to seek out a living situation with roommates.

    Side question: are more college students staying in solo dorms?

    • By OGEnthusiast 2026-01-2222:163 reply

      There's a huge gamble with roommates that you might be stuck with someone terrible in a year (or longer) lease. Most people who can afford to live alone would prefer to have their own place. This is just a sign that people are getting richer (since this same trend is happening in all first-world countries).

      • By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-2223:071 reply

        > a huge gamble with roommates that you might be stuck with someone terrible in a year (or longer) lease

        Life involves taking risks and measuring people. Getting stuck with a shitty roommate is pretty low stakes on that spectrum.

        > just a sign that people are getting richer (since this same trend is happening in all first-world countries)

        Valid hypothesis. I’d posit Covid and the increasingly prevalence of single-child households are the more-proximate cause.

        • By tayo42 2026-01-230:031 reply

          You definitely havent had bad roommates if you say that.

          • By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-230:062 reply

            > You definitely havent had bad roommates if you say that

            I lived in New York in an illegally-subdivided loft. Yes, I’ve had bad roommates. Yes, it felt overwhelming at first. And yes, I got over it, constraining the problem where possible and addressing it directly where necessary, a suite of skills that were probably instrumental in my start-up later working.

            • By OGEnthusiast 2026-01-230:442 reply

              Not accusing you of this directly, but this sounds like trying to get people to just accept lower living standards.

              • By triceratops 2026-01-233:10

                If living alone is "higher living standards" why are we even talking about this article?

              • By pepperball 2026-01-2313:17

                Expect a lot more of this.

      • By DrPimienta 2026-01-2318:43

        If the number of young people who can buy homes is going down and the number of young people that can afford to start families is also going down then how are people getting richer?

        This is a sign of social isolation, not wealth.

      • By nly 2026-01-2416:51

        People aren't getting richer in all first-world countries. In the UK the average salary is only up a few percentage points in real terms over 20 years

    • By cj 2026-01-2213:29

      oh man, you just gave me a flashback to my roommates a decade ago changing my WiFi router password since they thought I was working too much. That was not my finest moment as far as practicing conflict resolution goes :)

      But that’s also the point. Low risk situation to practice things that later in life become much higher risk. Better to figure out how to cohabitate with a few random roommates than a SO down the road.

    • By ASalazarMX 2026-01-2216:381 reply

      Living alone is awesome, but I also had roommates while in university, and despite our differences, that was awesome too, it would have sucked to be alone.

      I guess living alone can be a sound decision, but it depends on context.

      • By cdaringe 2026-01-232:35

        Exactly. “I love those **holes” is my fond sentiment. I rarely talk to them anymore but we all still consider each other best friends for life

  • By gniv 2026-01-2212:413 reply

    It's not a high number when compared to other first-world countries: https://statranker.org/population/top-10-countries-with-high...

    • By onlyrealcuzzo 2026-01-2213:13

      But it is one of the largest drivers for increased housing demand.

    • By throw0101a 2026-01-2213:08

      > https://statranker.org/population/top-10-countries-with-high...

      It's not (just) about the absolute number, but the trend as well; see "Chart 2. Rise of single-person households, 1990–2025".

    • By auggierose 2026-01-2212:463 reply

      Interesting that UK is not in the top 10 list. Because of more ethnic diversity, or because they cannot afford single households?

      • By notahacker 2026-01-2213:15

        Rare to live alone in London, even amongst single thirtysomething professionals earning well above median income.

  • By latexr 2026-01-2212:317 reply

    If more people lived together with friends, that’d make a dent in both the housing and loneliness crises.

    • By whywhywhywhy 2026-01-2213:072 reply

      Living close to friends and having a community that knows/supports each other helps a lot but living with friends is a good way to end up with less friends. Someone you can stand being around all day is very different than someone you really enjoy spending a few hours a month with.

      • By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-2213:142 reply

        > Someone you can stand being around all day is very different than someone you really enjoy spending a few hours a month with

        One is a friend. The other an acquaintance.

        • By whywhywhywhy 2026-01-2220:251 reply

          This isn't true at all and a pretty ridiculous statement. How someone lives in their own home has no impact on what their company is like in the outside world. Someone could be a bit of a hoarder, not do the dishes often enough, stay up to 3am listening to music none of that has anything to do with how good of a friend they are but it does matter if you live with them.

          • By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-2314:46

            > Someone could be a bit of a hoarder, not do the dishes often enough, stay up to 3am listening to music

            If someone is doing that while living with someone whom it’s bothering to the point of wanting to change living situations, there is a disconnect of empathy that betrays that it isn’t a friendship.

            (Granted, my original comment was honing in on the “few hours a month” bit. That’s fine for maintaining a friendship. But not for building one. Again, it’s perfectly adequate for making acquaintances.)

        • By SketchySeaBeast 2026-01-2214:351 reply

          Nah, the differences that can make for a dynamic friendship can be the ones that prevent cohabitation. If you're friends you don't have to care that they like to play loud music at 2 am, but you do when you live together.

          I have/had friends whose pickiness/slovenliness was fine until we tried to live together, and then all that became a personality clash. It's entirely possible to have strong friendships with people you couldn't live with.

          • By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-2314:49

            I’m not saying someone isn’t a friend if you can’t live together long term. But if you can’t “stand being around” someone “all day,” they’re clearly less than a friend.

            If my friends fell on hard times, they’d have a place to crash. I cannot say that of everyone I hang out with because not all of them are people whom I’d (a) enjoy being around and (b) trust to respect my boundaries (and trust myself to be tolerant of their incongruities with my preferences).

      • By firmretention 2026-01-2313:13

        I can attest to this. My best friend and I have known each other for almost 24 years, and we still talk/hang out regularly. We lived together for about a year in our early 20s and that did NOT go well. Luckily it didn't kill the friendship, but things were definitely tense for a while.

    • By lazide 2026-01-2212:394 reply

      The issue is the number of people who ‘surprise’ you with out of control behaviors that are a huge issue with room mates. And getting out of living situation with someone like that can be extremely difficult.

      People can seem perfectly fine, until they seem to spontaneously turn into hoarders, or start eating all your food and lying about it, or start being aggressively in your face about a bunch of antagonistic culture bullshit, etc.

      I think what we’re seeing is Americans increasingly fed up with (or even terrified of) other Americans.

      • By soulofmischief 2026-01-2212:55

        I moved in with one of my closest friends a few years ago, someone I considered a brother. In less than a year, I got someone to sublet and have not spoken to him since. I had no idea someone could be such a tool.

      • By latexr 2026-01-2213:071 reply

        There’s definitely some risk, but the alternative is not a panacea either (high rents, loneliness). You can also get closer to people and enrich your life, and it’s positive to practice tolerance for the behaviours of others (within reason).

        It’s possible there are more unhinged people today, but I think that’s also a consequence of us spending so much time alone in the first place (and sycophantic bots are only going to make that worse).

        I was also thinking of everyone, not just US Americans.

        • By lazide 2026-01-2213:491 reply

          Except for a very, very small number of people, everyone I've ever known who can afford to not have room mates - doesn't have room mates. Young or old.

          There is a reason for this, and it isn't because they hate their mental health.

          The issue here is how hard it is to protect your own mental health when someone else refuses to respect yours, and how a co-living situation can make that hard - because you literally are all up in each others business.

          • By latexr 2026-01-2216:141 reply

            > and it isn't because they hate their mental health.

            No, of course not. But that doesn’t also mean it can’t have an effect. Social media is harmful to many of us who still partake. Sometimes what we do isn’t what’s best. Some of those people who live alone could benefit from living with someone else, others might not. It’s not an absolute, just worth considering.

            > The issue here is how hard it is to protect your own mental health when someone else refuses to respect yours

            Right, but I feel too many people are focusing on dipshit housemates. Good and understanding people do exist. Like, would you be one of those disrespectful people you describe? Probably not, which proves people like you do exist.

            • By lazide 2026-01-2218:09

              I gave up on roommates years ago, so I would not even be in the eval set.

      • By hopelite 2026-01-2213:101 reply

        [flagged]

        • By mindslight 2026-01-2216:02

          If this is true, then why does it seem like the places with the least diversity are full of people Hell-bent on directly destroying the country?

          There's some truth in what you're saying regarding social cohesion, but you're skipping some very important steps like the media fanning reactionary flames by scaring rural dwellers that "diversity" is going to come for them, etc.

          Meanwhile people who are confronted with actual diversity in their day to day lives are less likely to buy into such simplistic and destructive narratives in the first place.

          This implies that the lack of social cohesion is better thought of as a result of hostile media convincing everyone they are under attack by some "other", than slightly different humans in people's real-life communities.

      • By hopelite 2026-01-2213:121 reply

        It’s something europeans don’t yet understand, that “diversity” has utterly destroyed community, trust, and tranquility in the US; mostly because it has been forced upon people against their will in direct contradiction of the core tenets of the Constitution and founding principles of America.

        I realize hearing that or seeing that others may read that, may anger people who are deeply invested in the fraud that diversity is good, but all the legitimate research into the topic all tells us the same thing; that “diversity” is detrimental to any and all human communities all around the world, even for the very group that pushes it on others while aggressively rejecting it for themselves and their own.

        edit: No amount of downvoting will change reality, whether you shoot the messenger or not. It's a shame, because good does not actually prevail, especially with brainwashed fools who assist those seeking the demise of others. Support of "diversity" is no different than the support of the genocide the jewish state committed and is to this day still committing in Gaza... the support of evil without the intelligence to understand that.

    • By xacky 2026-01-2212:591 reply

      Then again how many more people would live alone if they could afford to rent or buy on a single income?

      • By expedition32 2026-01-2213:111 reply

        Yeah in my country people leave their parents house in their early 20s. Independence and individuality are the foundational bedrock of my culture.

        But it's getting harder because of the housing market.

        • By latexr 2026-01-2213:241 reply

          > Independence and individuality

          Neither are threatened by living with a friend or someone else near your age. Sure, move out of your parents’ home, but that doesn’t mean you have to live alone.

          • By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-2213:58

            > Neither are threatened by living with a friend or someone else near your age

            The difference between sharing a 2BR and living in an apartment building are more exercises in cultural than physical difference.

    • By lapcat 2026-01-2213:111 reply

      Part of the loneliness crisis is the difficulty of making friends.

      This reminds me, yesterday I was walking down the hallway of my apartment building, and one of my neighbors passed by me but neglected to even acknowledge my existence, because their head was down staring at their smartphone.

      • By latexr 2026-01-2213:29

        > Part of the loneliness crisis is the difficulty of making friends.

        Sharing a house is a good way to combat that. Sometimes you move in with people you tangentially know. Sometimes you won’t be huge friends with them but can still interact, or may even meet some of their friends and hit it off.

    • By rickydroll 2026-01-2213:151 reply

      You know how you can tell if you have a really good friend? They will help you dispose of your roommate's body, 24 by 7, no questions asked.

    • By Esophagus4 2026-01-2212:53

      Living close to friends seems like a good idea as well.

      Living in suburbia has definitely made me yearn for this: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/should-more-of-us-...

    • By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-2213:20

      Both directly, by providing a social circle, and indirectly, by training people to live with a partner.

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