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The Verasight team recently partnered with Building H to survey Americans about their social media and video game habits, lifestyle choices, and feelings of social connectedness.
Building H co-founder Steve Downs shares that, “Building H is a project to reimagine everyday life to be healthy by design. It focuses on how the products and services people engage with regularly affect health behaviors like eating, physical activity, sleep and social engagement.” The Verasight survey, funded by Einhorn Collaborative, gets at the heart of Building H’s mission by polling Americans on their health, habits, and choices.
According to Building H's report, the survey of more than 3,100 U.S. adults found that 46% of U.S. adults are lonely. The Public Health Institute notes the online survey reached a demographically representative sample and was fielded between August 22 and September 5, 2023. The findings surfaced a paradox. Researchers found that both those who spend a lot of time on social media and those who spend much of their time playing video games report feeling more connected to others than those who spend less time on these activities. However, heavier social media and video game users also report higher feelings of loneliness than their lower-use peers.
Downs writes about the findings in a recent Medium article, connecting them to the larger body of work on loneliness in Americans. While Downs cautions that the findings of this survey should not be interpreted as causal, he also emphasizes the importance of future work on loneliness as remote options for daily tasks, appointments, and social gatherings continue to grow.
The Verasight team was excited to contribute to this important work by Building H. Verasight clients include academic researchers, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and media organizations. To find out how Verasight can help with your project needs such as high-quality national surveys, oversamples of hard-to-reach groups, voter file matching, or longitudinal studies, reach out to our team today.
