Psychology Today44%
Remote Work Worsens Mental Health: But There's a Twist 60%
By Ludovico Saint Amour di Chanaz Ph.D.81%
7/20/2026, 1:16:29 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Negativity Bias, with Post Hoc (False Cause) as the most egregious example at 51.9% saturation with 365 hits. Analysis detected 1,969 faulty-reasoning hits from 703 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 56.7% and a BS Rank of 60% (7,651 of 18,920 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 59.60% of the article peer group.
Remote work has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, and many individuals seem to prefer this modality over commuting to the office.
Many studies show that remote working improves job satisfaction and possibly performance—at least in the short term—but a new study published in Science shows that long-term effects on mental health may instead be negative.
The study compared people who were in "remotable" jobs (such as the ones doable via computer) and "non-remotable" ones, such as a waiter or jobs that require in-person presence.
The study analysed more than 500,000 Americans and showed that the metric most impacted by remote working was socialization.
Humans are social animals by nature, and while going out to speak to people felt normal and habitual in the pre-pandemic years, there was a post-pandemic shift where people who work remotely spend, on average, one more hour alone compared to people with non-remote jobs.
Mental health also worsened over time.
Scores of psychological distress increased for people in remote jobs, as did their scores for depression, anxiety, and loneliness compared with people who had non-remote jobs.
But here comes the twist.
People who lived with their family did not see an increase in distress scores when working remotely, nor did they see a significant increase in time spent alone, whereas people living alone saw a shift in the share of time spent alone—even post-pandemic—and in psychological distress.
Additionally, individuals who only recently took a remote job did not see this increase in psychological distress or time spent alone, which shows that this may not be a short-term consequence of remote working, but rather a long-term result.
## The Twist
Individuals who lived with their family but worked remotely did not see an increase in mental distress or time spent alone.
This shows that in-person work could be beneficial specifically to people who live alone, whereas people with families could instead benefit from remote working as they get to spend more time with their loved ones, instead of alone.
Another twist comes from the report we published with Neurobridge: Neurodivergent employees cited return-to-the-office (RTO) policies as one of the main stressors they face in their work.
In fact, individuals with autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), for example, may have different communication styles and not benefit as much from in-person socialization, which instead can become a stressor rather than a relief.
It should thus be considered that different populations may see different long-term outcomes from working remotely—or at least in a hybrid modality.
A study on 1,600 Chinese employees showed that flexibility and hybrid modalities improved job satisfaction, performance, and even mental health, but specifically for people who had long commute times and women.
## Conclusions
This reinforces the results shown by this brand new study in the United States, where living situations directly changed the long-term impact of remote work.
As is often the case with such discoveries, more research is warranted to see if findings extend to all population subtypes and to different countries.
In fact, in-person work in the United States may be very different than, say, in Spain or Japan.
Culture and city organisation also impact how people commute—in the United States, it is done preferentially by car, whereas, for example, in Paris, most people take the Metro or the train, and cities are walkable, which makes social interactions outside of work also easier—which could change the results of the observation.
Finally, it would be interesting to observe similar results on neurodivergent populations, especially in people who struggle with social interactions or sensory stimulation, as remote work could become an accommodation that improves mental health rather than worsening it.
Regardless, these results are quite interesting as they show that the COVID-19 pandemic created a shift not only in how we work but also in how we live.
In general, all people tend to spend more time alone and online after the pandemic than before it, and it informs us on the fact that seeing more people may be a good way to preserve one's mental health, and that in-person work provides an opportunity to do so; being more intentional in real-world interactions may eventually be beneficial to everyone.
Analysis
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