Hobbies: an endangered species?

Their hobby might be practicing poses for a Le Penseur group photo.
#GreatRodinMoments

I read a couple interesting articles¹ today and learned that hobbies are apparently on their last legs! One begins:

Too many kids let screen time and homework crowd out real pursuits. If you ask most young people today if they have any hobbies, you will receive one of four answers:

1. "No."

2. "What do you mean?"

3. "Yeah. I play video games/watch TV/watch movies."

4. "Yeah..." and then they may actually cite a hobby.

The fourth is the least common.

But where exactly is the line between an activity and a hobby?

There's this sense that a hobby is somehow different from simple entertainment. As one author put it:

There's a difference between hobbies and pastimes. Hobbies are things you have a genuine interest in; pastimes simply pass the time.

But is that just hobby elitism? At the end of the day, isn't a hobby by definition something you do in your free time? Perhaps this next quote gets at the distinction:

There is a world of difference between being active and being passive, between creating something and watching something, between doing something and being entertained.

I still don't think this is quite right. It's not like there's some universal assessment for evaluating activities: meet five of the nine criteria and it's active rather than passive; check these four boxes and it graduates from pastime to hobby. Congratulations, and smile for the photo as you pick up your diploma.

Activities can be evaluated on different dimensions, like entertainment value, required expenditure to get started, the effort needed to progress, and fulfillment. I'd argue that this last dimension, fulfillment, is where the authors would say a lot of pastimes fall short. Watching a movie can be entertaining, but is it fulfilling? What's the difference between being a moviegoer and, say, being a film buff who talks to like-minded people about the historical context of their favorite Ingmar Bergman film? How about watching a baseball game versus collecting baseball cards versus playing in a community league?

I think the necessary ingredients for fulfillment are genuine interest, progress toward mastery, and personal growth. Without genuine interest it's work, without any ability to improve it's shallow, and without any impact on the rest of one's life² it's a diversion.

On that note, I found this next quote to be the most thought-provoking from either piece.

We're not looking for the things that interest us or uniquely move us; we're simply fixated on whatever is prepared for us on a silver platter by media outlets and trending topics.

We live in a culture that celebrates our individuality. If I pull up my internet browser, I can find a mind-boggling amount of information about innumerable topics, suggestions for pastimes, things to see, things to do, things to learn, things to share. There are huge numbers of opportunities available, probably more than at any other time in history.

So why is it that within this culture so many people seem to do all the same things, at least in broad strokes? Maybe one person watches TV shows on Netflix and another on Amazon Prime, or someone reads headlines on CNN and someone else reads them on Fox, but how much of that reflects individuality and how much is simply attention being captured by algorithms developed by media outlets to serve content "on a silver platter"? Isn't there some superficiality to this cornucopia of choice?

Barring a lot of luck, fulfillment requires knowing oneself, knowing oneself requires introspection, and introspection requires free time. I guess it does come back to too much screen time and homework crowding out everything else.


1 Namely, What are your child's passions? by Dennis Prager and Why don't millennials have hobbies anymore? by Dan Scotti. (back)

2 I don't mean that a hobby must be used in one's daily life to be fulfilling, just that it should shape the individual in some way, perhaps in capabilities or perhaps in personal values. For example, I think the time I put into weight training makes all other physical activity easier, the time I've spent on chess helps with concentration, and the time I've spent practicing music has increased critical listening and self-discipline. (back)