Neal’s Numbers Mega Recap: Death of Partying, 2 Escalators in WY, and More
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the most fascinating facts and figures from the year.
It's a supersized version of Neil's Numbers. It's Wednesday, December 31st. Let's ride.
Good morning and happy New Year's Eve. One of everyone's favorite segments on the podcast, and I'm not just saying this because it has my name on it, is Neil's Numbers. It's a segment we run on Thursdays where I share three stats from the week's news that will save you from the most awkward small talk encounters. For this special holiday week episode, we're going to pick out the best of Neil's Numbers for 2025. Our team poured over every stat or figure I discussed in Neil's Numbers from the year and picked a couple that stood out from the pack. either for representing a broader theme from the year or just because they were so bizarre. Toby, are you ready to go?
Do I have a choice? Yes, I'm ready. Let's do this thing. But before we do this thing, a word from our sponsor, Public. Neil, remember when we said we'd start doing more adult things this year?
Yeah, and I've been pretty good. I've been meal prepping, getting better sleep, and hitting the gym.
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New Year's resolutions just got a whole lot easier. Get started at public.com slash morningbrew and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash morningbrew. Paid for by public investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. Now here's our episode about Neil's numbers.
As I was reviewing all the Neil's numbers from the year, I found that many of them fit into distinct themes or buckets that speak to what the world was like in 2025. And Toby and I are going to run them down now. The first clear theme that emerged was the death of partying, especially among young people. The writer Derek Thompson has been beating this drum for a while and put together some jaw dropping stats to highlight what he describes as as the anti-social century. Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time Americans spent hosting or attending a social event plummeted by 50%. Among Americans aged 15 to 24, they spent 70% less time partying than they did just 20 years ago. And the list goes on. Men who watch television now spend seven hours in front of the TV for every one hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside their home.
The typical female pet owner spends more time actively engaged with her pet than she spends in face-to-face contact with human friends. And since the early 2000s, the amount of time that Americans say they spend helping or caring for people outside their nuclear family has dropped by more than a third. Toby, we are becoming a nation of homebodies.
And I don't think you can ignore the downstream effect that's happening in the alcohol industry as well. I mean, partying and alcohol inevitably go hand in hand. And only 54% of Americans said that they imbibed in adult beverages. That is the lowest number in Gallup's 90 years of polling. People are drinking less. They're hanging out less. They're spending more time with their pets. A big issue too for kids is that their parents are actually watching them more. They're paying more attention to them. That was something that Derek Thompson highlighted in his piece about the lack of partying. Mother's time with childcare increased by 200 minutes a week. Father's time spent on childcare increased by 240 minutes a week.
So you kind of are getting this combination of none of the youths are drinking anymore.
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