The percentage of adults who did not live with a spouse or partner increased steadily up through around 2019, now hitting 44 percent.

That seems like a lot of people.

Of course, not all of these people are living alone. You can live with roommates or family members who are not spouses or partners, but over a quarter (27.6%) of all U.S.-occupied households were one-person households in 2020, up from just 7.7% in 1940.

The share of people living alone has increased every decade from 1940 to 2020.

Young people are also far more likely to be unpartnered than any other age demographic, with 88 percent of men aged 18 to 24 and 83 percent of women aged 18 to 24 not having a partner.

Those numbers strike me as astronomically high.

Looking back on my own life and doing quick math, I think I was single for about six percent of my dating and married life.

For about 94% of my life, since the age of 16, I have been romantically attached to another person.

I lived alone for exactly one year, from April 2001 to April 2002.

Otherwise, I lived with my parents and siblings, friends, and my wife and kids.

I’m not sure if my life represents an outlier in terms of romantic attachments and living alone, but I don’t think so.

Only 12% of men aged 18-24 have a romantic partner at any one time?

And only 17% of women?

Those numbers seem unbelievable to me. I feel like the statisticians calculated poorly, or I’m missing something.

Are young people really so alone? So romantically unattached?

If so, is it what they want?