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In his February 2025 cover story for The Atlantic, journalist Derek Thompson dubbed our current era the anti-social century. He isnt wrong. According to our recent research, the U.S. is becoming a nation of homebodies. Using data from the American Time Use Survey, we studied how people in the U.S. spent their time before, during, and after the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic did spur more Americans to stay home. But this trend didnt start or end with the pandemic. We found that Americans were already spending more and more time at home and less and less time engaged in activities away from home stretching all the way back to at least 2003. And if you thought the end of lockdowns and the spread of vaccines led to a revival of partying and playing sports and dining out, you would be mistaken. The pandemic, it turns out, mostly accelerated ongoing trends. All of this has major implications for traffic, public transit, real estate, the workplace, socializing, and mental health. Life inside The trend of staying home is not new. There was a steady decline in out-of-home activities in the two decades leading up to the pandemic. Compared with 2003, Americans in 2019 spent nearly 30 minutes less per day on out-of-home activities and eight fewer minutes a day traveling. There could be any number of reasons for this shift, but advances in technology, whether its smartphones, streaming services, or social media, are likely culprits. You can video chat with a friend rather than meeting them for coffee; order groceries through an app instead of venturing to the supermarket; and stream a movie instead of seeing it in a theater. Of course, there was a sharp decline in out-of-home activities during the pandemic, which dramatically accelerated many of these stay-at-home trends. Outside of travel, time spent on out-of-home activities fell by over an hour per day, on average, from 332 minutes in 2019 to 271 minutes in 2021. Travel, excluding air travel, fell from 69 to 54 minutes per day over the same period. But even after the pandemic lockdowns were lifted, out-of-home activities and travel through 2023 remained substantially depressed, far below 2019 levels. There was a dramatic increase in remote work, online shopping, time spent using digital entertainment, such as streaming and gaming, and even time spent sleeping. Time spent outside of the home has rebounded since the pandemic, but only slightly. There was hardly any recovery of out-of-home activities from 2022 to 2023, meaning 2023 out-of-home activities and travel were still far below 2019 levels. On the whole, Americans are spending nearly 1.5 hours less outside their homes in 2023 than they did in 2003. While hours worked from home in 2022 were less than half of what they were in 2021, theyre still about five times what they were ahead of the pandemic. Despite this, only about one-quarter of the overall travel time reduction is due to less commuting. The rest reflects other kinds of travel, for activities such as shopping and socializing. Ripple effects This shift has already had consequences. With Americans spending more time working, playing, and shopping from home, demand for office and retail space has fallen. While there have been some calls by major employers for workers to spend more time in the office, research suggests that working from home in the U.S. held steady between early 2023 and early 2025 at about 25% of paid work days. As a result, surplus office space may need to be repurposed as housing and for other uses. There are advantages to working and playing at home, such as avoiding travel stress and expenses. But it has also boosted demand for extra space in apartments and houses, as people spend more time under their own roof. It has changed travel during the traditional morningand, especially, afternoonpeak periods, spreading traffic more evenly throughout the day but contributing to significant public transit ridership losses. Meanwhile, more package and food delivery drivers are competing with parked cars and bus and bike lanes for curb space. Perhaps most importantly, spending less time out and about in the world has sobering implications for Americans well beyond real estate and transportation systems. Research were currently conducting suggests that more time spent at home has dovetailed with more time spent alone. Suffice it to say, this makes loneliness, which stems from a lack of meaningful connections, a more common occurrence. Loneliness and social isolation are associated with increased risk for early mortality. Because hunkering down appears to be the new norm, we think its all the more important for policymakers and everyday people to find ways to cultivate connections and community in the shrinking time they do spend outside of the home. Brian D. Taylor is a professor of urban planning and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles; Eric Morris is a professor of city and regional planning at Clemson University, and Sam Speroni is a PhD student in urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Iran increasingly relies on electronic surveillance and the public to inform on women refusing to wear the country’s mandatory headscarf in public, even as hard-liners push for harsher penalties for those protesting the law, a United Nations report released Friday found.The findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran come after it determined last year that the country’s theocracy was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to the death of Mahsa Amini. Her death led to nationwide protests against the country’s mandatory hijab laws and the public disobedience against them that continues even today, despite the threat of violent arrest and imprisonment.“Two and a half years after the protests began in September 2022, women and girls in Iran continue to face systematic discrimination, in law and in practice, that permeates all aspects of their lives, particularly with respect to the enforcement of the mandatory hijab,” the report said.“The state is increasingly reliant on state-sponsored vigilantism in an apparent effort to enlist businesses and private individuals in hijab compliance, portraying it as a civic responsibility.”Iran’s mission to the UN in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the findings of the 20-page report. Drones, surveillance cameras monitor women In it, UN investigators outline how Iran increasingly relies on electronic surveillance. Among the efforts include Iranian officials deploying “aerial drone surveillance” to monitor women in public places. At Tehran’s Amirkabir University, authorities installed facial recognition software at its entrance gate to also find women not wearing the hijab, it said.Surveillance cameras on Iran’s major roadways also are believed to be involved in searching for uncovered women. UN investigators said they obtained the “Nazer” mobile phone app offered by Iranian police, which allows the public to report on uncovered women in vehicles, including ambulances, buses, metro cars, and taxis.“Users may add the location, date, time, and the license plate number of the vehicle in which the alleged mandatory hijab infraction occurred, which then ‘flags’ the vehicle online, alerting the police,” the report said. “It then triggers a text message (in real-time) to the registered owner of the vehicle, warning them that they had been found in violation of the mandatory hijab laws, and that their vehicles would be impounded for ignoring these warnings.”Those text messages have led to dangerous situations. In July 2024, police officers shot and paralyzed a woman who activists say had received such a message and was fleeing a checkpoint near the Caspian Sea. Tensions remain after 2022 death of Mahsa Amini Amini’s death sparked months of protests and a security crackdown that killed more than 500 people and led to the detention of more than 22,000. After the mass demonstrations, police dialed down enforcement of hijab laws, but it ramped up again in April 2024 under what authorities called the Nooror “Light”Plan. At least 618 women have been arrested under the Noor Plan, the UN investigators said, citing a local human rights activist group in Iran.Meanwhile, Iran executed at least 938 people last year, a threefold increase from 2021, the UN said. While many were convicted of drug charges, the report said the executions “indicate a nexus with the overall repression of dissent in this period.”As Iran continues its crackdown over the hijab, it also faces an economic crisis over U.S. sanctions due to its rapidly advancing nuclear program. While U.S. President Donald Trump has called for new negotiations, Iran has yet to respond to a letter he sent to its 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Social unrest, coupled with the economic woes, remain a concern for Iran’s theocracy. Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Jamey Keaten and Jon Gambrell, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Gucci announced Thursday that the Balenciaga artistic director Demna will take over the creative direction of the Italian luxury fashion house, starting in July.Gucci and its French parent Kering said in a statement that Demna “has redefined modern luxury, earning global recognition and cementing his authority on the industry.”Demna, who goes by one name, has been at Kering-owned Balenciaga for a decade. He brings with him the title of artistic director.“I am truly excited to join the Gucci family,” he said in a statement. “It is an honor to contribute to a house that I deeply respect and have long admired.”Demna showed his latest and last Balenciaga ready-to-wear collection four days ago in Paris, dialing down the theatrics for a more saleable vision.The announcement ends speculation about Gucci’s creative future after Sabato De Sarno’s sudden exit just 2 1/2 weeks before the presentation of the Fall-Winter 2025-26 collection during Milan Fashion Week last month.De Sarno took over from Alessandro Michele, who revolutionized Gucci with gender-fluid, eclectic and romantic collections that rewrote the brand’s codes. De Sarno’s more essential collections failed to excite consumers.
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E-Commerce
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