FILE - A visitor takes a picture of Luis Berrueco, "Saint Francis before Pope Honorius III, (c, 1710) on display at the Press Preview For LACMAs "Archive Of The World" Exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art on June 8, 2022, in Los Angeles, Ca Between shutdowns of businesses and schools, social lives upended, and job losses, the pandemic brought dramatic changes to many aspects of life.
One result of such a turbulent time now appears to be less exploration of one’s own city, according to new research. A paper, published in late April in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that people are making fewer visits to museums, leisure venues, transport sites, and coffee shops post-pandemic.
The study, led by a team of MIT researchers, specifically looked at the movement of people in four U.S. cities before and after the onset of the pandemic and found a 15% to 30% decrease in the number of visits residents were making to areas that are socioeconomically different from their own.
Less movement has also reduced people’s opportunities to interact with others from varied social and economic circles, according to the team. "We see that changes like working from home, less exploration, more online shopping, all these behaviors add up," Esteban Moro, a research scientist at MIT’s Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC) and another of the paper’s co-authors, said in a statement. "Working from home is amazing and shopping online is great, but we are not seeing each other at the rates we were before."It's been three years since the Covid-19 pandemic started.