You’re missing the biggest problem with the statistic you quoted: Discussing percentage changes in free time spent seems misleading without also explaining how overall free time has changed. Do people have more free time now? With the rise of remote and hybrid work it’s expected that less time on average would be spent commuting. A percentage change in free time use seems intentionally misleading.
I can't link to specific query results from the American Time Use Survey, but from this page [1], you can check "Avg hrs per day - Socializing and communicating", click "Retrieve Data", then adjust the time range using the dropdowns at the top, to be up to 2003 - 2024. In absolute terms (hours, not percent) there are declines both for the whole period, and from from 2003-2019 (i.e. before the pandemic).
And you can look at the series for "Avg hrs per day for participants - Working at home" and confirm that as expected it is relatively stable through 2019 and jumps in 2020, so the decrease in socializing through 2019 is not about WFH.
