Digital Life Index

Digital Life Index

Digital life across U.S. states.

ABOUT

The Digital Life Index captures how digital technologies are embedded in everyday life: remote work, digital leisure (such as gaming, web browsing, and social media), and access to internet services. The extent to which our lives are digitalized can influence our wellbeing, social interaction, productivity, and family life.

Learn more about the measures ↓

Figure 2: Digital life across U.S. states

Choose a measure and year to explore the state-by-state pattern.

Digital Life Index

Darker shades indicate higher values. The color range is fixed to the full state-year range for each measure, so colors remain comparable across years.

Select a state on the map or from the list to view its digital-life profile below.

Figure 3: Digital profile of selected state

The Digital Life Index and three normalized component scores for the selected state and year.

State · Year

Hover over a bar for the state's descending rank within the selected year. Tied scores share a rank.

Figure 4: How digital life differs across states

Select a measure and year to compare state-level values.

Selected measures are shown in their original units. Shares are reported as percentages, while digital leisure is measured in average minutes per day.

About the measures

The Digital Life Index brings together three dimensions of digital exposure in everyday life: work, leisure, and access to internet services. The definitions below describe what each dimension captures.

Digital Work
The prevalence of working from home, measured using the American Community Survey.
Digital Leisure
Average daily time spent playing games and using computers or the internet for personal leisure, including recreational web browsing, social media, online chatting, and similar activities. Measured using the American Time Use Survey.
Digital Accessibility
Household access to the internet, high-speed internet, and cellular data plans, measured using the American Community Survey.

Method

The Digital Life Index is constructed from three dimensions: Digital Work, Digital Leisure, and Digital Accessibility. These dimensions draw on the American Community Survey (ACS) and the American Time Use Survey (ATUS).

Digital Work

Digital Work measures the prevalence of working from home using the American Community Survey.

Digital Leisure

Digital Leisure measures average daily time spent playing games and using a computer or the internet for personal leisure using the American Time Use Survey. Computer-based leisure includes activities such as recreational web browsing, social media use, online chatting, and other personal-interest computer use. It does not capture all forms of internet or screen use because ATUS classifies activities according to their primary purpose.

Digital Accessibility

Digital Accessibility combines household access to the internet, high-speed internet, and cellular data plans using the American Community Survey.

Index construction

The three dimensions are standardized and combined using principal component analysis (PCA). The first principal component is used to construct the overall Digital Life Index because it loads positively on all three dimensions.

How to interpret the scores

The Digital Life Index is rescaled from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating greater digital-life intensity relative to other state-year observations in the sample.

The Digital Work Score, Digital Leisure Score, and Digital Accessibility Score displayed in Figures 1–3 are normalized 0–1 measures for comparing values across states and years. They are relative scores, not percentages. Figure 4 presents selected measures—such as remote work share, internet access, and average daily digital-leisure minutes—in their original units.

Coverage

The data cover 2016–2019 and 2021–2023 for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. 2020 is omitted because the American Time Use Survey did not produce a comparable full-year estimate.

For detailed variable definitions, normalization procedures, data construction, and source documentation, see the Methods README.

Download data

State-year data and documentation are available for research and replication.

CSV Stata (.dta) Methods / README