Friday night has become "just another weeknight"

The Atlantic makes note of a social trend in the U.S.:

Americans have been spending less and less time with their friends over the past two decades, a trend that started well before the isolation of the coronavirus pandemic, and has continued long after restrictions were lifted. But looking across the week, Caren found that, starting in the mid-2010s, the biggest loss of friend time happened on Friday nights. (Saturday hangs have also declined a bit, but are still “nearly double the weekday level,” he wrote.)...

But it seems that the vibe of Friday night is evolving... people of all ages have been reporting a strong preference for staying home on evenings and weekends. In a 2020 Gallup poll, Americans’ favorite way to spend an evening was “staying home with family.” The runner-up was “watching television or a movie at home.” Only 3 percent of people named “entertaining/visiting friends” as their favorite evening activity. In a 2026 Harris poll on Gen Z, 73 percent said that staying home was their default weekend plan...

Friday nights in particular might be suffering because of their association with hitting the bars; drinking has fallen out of favor in the U.S... Or people might simply be too exhausted at the end of the workweek... For whatever reason, “the cost of going out on Friday nights—people aren’t finding this worthwhile anymore.”

An article in The Guardian comes to the same conclusion.