In 2003, the average American spent about an hour a day with friends in person. By 2020, that figure had fallen to about 20 minutes. For people aged 15 to 24, it dropped from roughly 150 minutes a day to 40. Those numbers come from the American Time Use Survey, and the U.S. Surgeon General cited them in a 2023 advisory titled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.

The pandemic did not start this slide, but it sped it up. The argument of this article is that a weeknight game with other people, whether pool, darts or pickup basketball, is not a break from taking care of yourself. It is one of the more reliable ways to do it. Here is the evidence, and how to get the most from your own match nights.

How much less time do we spend with other people?

A lot less, and the trend started well before Covid. Americans spent a growing share of their free time alone from 2003 to 2019, and less of it with other people away from home. The pandemic pushed both numbers further in 2020. Time with friends, especially for young adults, fell by nearly 70 percent over almost two decades.

Economist Enghin Atalay of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia measured the shift in 2022. The share of Americans' free time spent alone rose from 43.5 percent in 2003 to 48.7 percent in 2019, then to 50.7 percent in 2020. Free time spent with other people outside the home fell from 21.9 percent to 17.3 percent over the same years, then to 12.3 percent in the first pandemic year.

That last number is the one a pool league answers directly. A match night is free time, spent with other people, outside the home.

Why does loneliness matter for your health?

Loneliness is not only a feeling. The Surgeon General's 2023 advisory found that about half of U.S. adults reported experiencing loneliness even before the pandemic. It compared the mortality risk of lacking social connection to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

That comparison draws on large studies that follow people over years, and it describes risk across a population rather than a promise about any one person. Still, few public health warnings put social life in the same sentence as cigarettes. The advisory's message was plain: connection is a health behavior, like sleep or exercise, and most of us are getting less of it than we used to.

Does playing sport with others help mental health?

Yes. Large studies link playing sport, and especially playing with others, to better mental health. In a study of more than 1.2 million American adults, people who played team sports reported about 22 percent fewer days of poor mental health than people who did not exercise, the largest difference of any activity measured.

That study, by Sammi Chekroud and colleagues, was published in The Lancet Psychiatry in 2018. It was cross-sectional: it shows an association at one point in time, not proof that sport causes better mental health. It also measured exercise, and a game of pool is lighter on the body than soccer. So the honest reading is narrower: the activities that combined movement with other people came out on top.

A 2023 systematic review in Systematic Reviews helps explain why. Narelle Eather, Levi Wade, Aurélie Pankowiak and Rochelle Eime reviewed the research on adults and concluded that sport of any kind was linked to better mental health and social outcomes, and that team sport was linked to better outcomes than individual sport. Their preliminary model points to two likely paths: the physical activity itself, and the social side, including connectedness, support from others and belonging to a club.

Why might casual competition beat hanging out?

Competition gives people a reason to show up and something to talk about besides themselves. A weekly match creates a standing plan, a shared goal and small, regular contact with the same faces. That structure may carry people past the awkward start of a friendship, which casual plans often fail to do.

This is an inference from the research above, not a finding of any single study: the social path Eather and her colleagues describe depends on repeated contact and belonging, and a league builds both into the calendar. You do not have to be outgoing. You have to show up on the night your name is on the board.

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