Before the pandemic, three or four out of every hundred young adults had no in-person contact with other human beings on an average day.
Posted by Bulwark Takes, Checked
- Sources
- 3 support2 context
- Said
- 1 time·
- Confidence
- 60%
Bulwark TakesAug 21, 2026
Several outlets report that about 3% of young adults had no face-to-face interaction on an average day in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, which matches the claim's 'three or four out of a hundred.' All of these reports appear to trace to one Financial Times analysis of Census/ATUS data, and no primary ATUS release in the sources states the figure.
What was said
… So there's a large portion, particularly of young people, who have no contact whatsoever with other human beings, at least not in person. So, on an average day, one in ten young adults now has no in person contact, whereas, um, let's say before the pandemic, uh, it was three or four people now it's, ah, three or four out of a hundred. Now it's ten out of a hundred, have no contact with any luck. We can get that number down to one in three, and that it found that he also found that, um, it's a real shift, like, among a certain sector, segment of young people. …
Bulwark Takes · · from the transcriptPost →What we found
Supports. The NY Post (tier3) reports that in 2019, the last year before the pandemic, only 3% of young adults were not socializing face-to-face on a daily basis, citing an analysis of US Census data.[3]
Supports. Brobible reports that in 2019, according to the American Time Use Survey, only 3% of young people did not regularly socialize in person.[4]
Supports. Full-text iceclog piece states that before the pandemic the figure of young adults with no in-person interaction on an average day was only around 3%.[5]
Context. The primary ATUS news release and program pages in the sources do not directly report the share of young adults with zero in-person contact, so the 3% figure rests on secondary coverage of one underlying analysis.[1][2]
Context. The claim's 'three or four' range is consistent with the reported 3% figure, and the extraction faithfully reproduces the passage's wording, which refers to young people in general.[3][4][5]
Sources
5 sources: 2 primary, 1 tier 3, 2 not rated
- 1American Time Use Survey (ATUS)census.gov · primary source · cited for: context
- 2American Time Use Survey News Releasebls.gov · primary source · cited for: context
- 3Shocking number of Gen Z shut-ins report zero face-to-face ...nypost.com · tier 3 · cited for: supports, context
- 4Many Gen Zers Report No Daily Face-To-Face Human Interactionsbrobible.com · not rated · cited for: supports, context
- 5Face-to-Face Contact Is Disappearing for a Growing Share of Young Adultsiceclog.com · not rated · cited for: supports, context
Where this claim was made
Said in 1 published post