Help! My Phone’s Stolen My Hobbies!

If you want to make a Gen Z crowd uncomfortable with a single question, ask them "What are your hobbies?" Upon being asked this question, one immediately thinks of those rare guitar lessons you had in secondary school, or the fact that you actually finished that film three weeks ago, or perhaps you get flashbacks to that intense HIIT gym class you endured when you still felt optimistic about your New Year’s resolutions.

It goes without saying that time glued to our screens has replaced the time for real tactile hobbies in our decreasingly analogue lives. This makes me wonder, what are the long-term effects of an increasingly hobby-less society? Have screens really made us forget the importance of them?

Before we lament on how the digital grip is seemingly inescapable, let’s start with an (extremely) brief history of hobbies in the UK. The Industrial Revolution allowed people to embrace leisure time, with strict working hours carving out distinct periods for time off. Hobbies became prescribed for the weekend. Working-class leisure activities in the Victorian period included bowling, partaking in dramatics, fruit and vegetable shows, flower shows, and meetings of trades and friendly societies. Children enjoyed imagination-centred traditional activities like playing with rocking horses, yo-yos and intricate dollhouses. Yikes. Victorian activities were frighteningly different from those of today’s younger generation: married to their food-encrusted iPads and listening to K-Pop Demon Hunters while playing Subway Surfers at restaurant tables. Granted, when faced with the contrast of the far-gone Victorian traditional pastimes, it’s easy to exaggerate the modern age of screen addiction. But isn’t it that severe? Should we be alarmed at the current rejection of tactile and substantial hobbies?

It is estimated that people are spending an average of 5 hours a day on their phones. Time spent engaging in constructive hobbies is thus rapidly declining. Less time is spent reading, learning new languages, playing sports, gardening, or playing musical instruments. More time is spent doomscrolling, DM-ing, snapping, half-swiping, sharing, following and posting. This very realisation fuelled the ironically online trend of ‘going analogue in 2026’. I am - like you, I’d imagine - suddenly inundated with influencers sharing their ‘journalling routines’, or vlogging themselves practising crafts like knitting or crocheting in the name of ‘breaking their screen addiction’.

I can’t help but wonder if this online content is self-defeating. Of course, our generation has somehow managed to make trying to break free from our online identity an online trend. This, for me, presents just how unavoidable the digital grip is. Indeed, it is painfully obvious that our generation must be broadcasting every single thing we get up to. The famous question is as relevant as ever: "Would you run the marathon if you couldn’t post a 6-slide Instagram post detailing every thought process you had during a 6-month training period?" The answer is for many Gen Z: no. Society’s burden of having to digitally prove everything we do makes hobbies inextricably connected to social media. This clearly defeats the whole point of hobbies. A true hobby is born out of an organic exploration of enjoyment, ideally without the background noise of a possible social media post. So, do we ever really get time off from our digital lives? Have we eradicated the concept of a true hobby?

It is proven that phone addiction has minimised our attention spans. The constant stimulation of phone notifications and being shown relentless content means we find it harder to focus on ‘slow burn’ content, like books, or even long-form YouTube videos. A society whose brains are addicted to the constant dopamine rush of screens is clearly an inhospitable environment for hobbies to be actively pursued - especially as some hobbies take years to refine.

After observing the harmful effects of screen addiction on our leisure time, you’ll quickly make ‘going analogue’ your 2026 New Year's Resolution… but it will end up being your 2027 New Year's Resolution too, and then your 2028 New Year's Resolution.

Words by Juliette Huntingdon, she/her