Not only the cinema is feeling the impact of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Disney Plus. It is also causing changes in our homes.
Which room is disappearing? According to trends indicated by older surveys from the National Association of Home Builders
in the USA, traditional dining rooms or even clearly separated dining areas are becoming less popular. Once, almost every apartment had a space where people would eat together.
Nowadays, limited living space is preferred to be used differently, and streaming through services like Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon Prime supports this development. The Atlantic also reports on this, featuring Stephen Smith, the director of the Center for Building in North America
:
It’s not that [they] don’t want dining rooms. It’s that they really want something else, and that takes space.
The Sofa as the Centerpiece
What is increasingly taking up space in apartments and houses? Generally, according to surveys like those from the National Association of Home Builders
, the desire for combined living/dining/kitchen areas is increasing. Instead of nested configurations of hallways and rooms, more and more people prefer large spaces that serve multiple purposes. Functional divisions use shelves or low walls.
More extensive sofa areas or even niche-divided entertainment zones are now often taking the place of former dining rooms. They serve as the social center of the apartment, where meals are sometimes even eaten. Streaming ensures optimal entertainment programming at any time of day and for any meal.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, the number of Netflix subscribers, for example, increased more than 5,000 times between 2001 and 2023. Last year, there were about 260 million.
What applies to houses affects apartments in multi-family buildings even more: According to data from the United States Census Bureau
, the number of people living alone in the USA tripled between 1940 and 2020. And as housing becomes more expensive, dining rooms are increasingly simply being replaced by multifunctional spaces, as Stephen Smith explains to The Atlantic. He also points to US building codes that make a dining room impossible for many types of multi-family homes.
Note on Methodology: All the data compiled here represent logical correlations. The developments are not necessarily causative, but together they create a clear picture of changing habits and expectations regarding living.
Over decades, a neighborhood can change enormously. A postcard reached its now foreign destination more than 100 years after its first delivery. But through detours, it could still find its way to descendants of the original recipients: Postcard arrives after 120 years and stands for exemplary duty fulfillment of the post
