It’s not just the cinema that is affected by streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney Plus. It also causes changes in our home.
Which room disappears? According to trends that were already indicated in older surveys by the National Association of Home Builders in the USA, classic dining rooms or even clearly separated dining areas are becoming less popular. There was once a room in almost every apartment where people could eat together.
Nowadays, the limited living space is preferred to be used differently and streaming through services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime support this development. The Atlantic also reports on this, where Stephen Smith, director of the Center for Building in North America, has his say:
It’s not like that [sie] don’t want dining rooms. The point is that they desperately want something else, and that takes up space.
Students spy on passers-by with a hidden camera and an AI, find out their name and address in seconds
More videos
Autoplay
The sofa as the centerpiece
What is increasingly taking up space in apartments and houses? In general, the desire for combined living/dining/kitchen areas is increasing, according to surveys such as those from the National Association of Home Builders. Instead of nesting constellations of hallways and rooms, more and more people prefer large rooms that serve multiple purposes. Shelves or low walls are used for functional division.
Larger sofa areas or even niche entertainment zones now often take the place of dining rooms. They serve as the social center of the apartment, where people sometimes even eat. Streaming usually guarantees the optimal entertainment program at any time of day or meal.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, Netflix’s subscriber numbers, for example, increased by a factor of more than 5,000 between 2001 and 2023. Last year there were around 260 million.
What applies to houses has an even greater impact on apartments in multi-family buildings: Furthermore, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, the number of people living alone in the United States tripled between 1940 and 2020. And the more expensive living space becomes, the more likely dining rooms are to simply be replaced by multifunctional rooms, as Stephen Smith explains to The Atlantic. In this context, he also refers to US building regulations that simply make a dining room impossible for many types of apartment buildings.
Note on methodology: All the data compiled here represent logical connections. The developments are not necessarily dependent on each other, but together they form a clear picture of changing habits and expectations of living.
A neighborhood can change enormously over decades. A postcard reached its now-foreign destination more than 100 years after it was first delivered. But in a detour it could still find descendants of the recipients at the time: postcard arrives after 120 years and represents exemplary fulfillment of the postal service’s duties