❶ Did French Women Exist Before Beauvoir?
❷ Dinner Parties, Narcissus and the Power of a Hypothetical
❸ Motherhood and Creativity
❹ Slate
❶ Did French Women Exist Before Beauvoir?
❷ Dinner Parties, Narcissus and the Power of a Hypothetical
❸ Motherhood and Creativity
❹ Slate
I Sure Love Scrolling
by Alex Cooper Williams
There is a quiet predator roaming amongst the fields of the younger generations, and much like a tiger hunting its prey, it is often loud, flashy, and (to its credit) often looks cool as hell – its name is TikTok, and it’s hunting hobbies.
Generations Z and Alpha are running out of hobbies, not because they no longer exist - Sprig Magazine is living proof that they do. But largely because our 'pals' over at the big tech companies have realised that selling paintbrushes is far less profitable than selling advertising algorithms.
This is also not to say you must be doing something positive or productive all the time. We've all had days where we'd rather stay in and binge-watch something than move a single muscle lest we get forced into action. But for many in the younger generations, it's become normalised to rack up huge amounts of screen time. The average now varies between 7 to9 hours, depending on which expert you ask.
What's the big deal though, I hear you ask. Well, dear reader, wonderful question. Truthfully, it's none of my business whether a 23-year-old now spends more time on TikTok than learning how to crochet or playing soccer on the weekends. But hobbies are more than just distractions, which, for the most part, is what they seem to have become (from my super cool and worldly perspective). Hobbies themselves are forms of self-expression, community-building, and stress relief. I can't tell you just how many times I've asked someone for their hobbies and been met with 'Watching TV', 'Sleeping', or 'Doomscrolling'. When hobbies vanish, what fills the gap is a sense of burnout, loneliness, and an increasingly overwhelming reliance on digital consumption.
The Productivity Trap
But Alex, sometimes I just want to turn my brain off and scroll, I hear you say (loving the interactivity, keep it up). And that's fair enough. Too often, hobbies that we once loved fall into the 'productivity trap', a trap I have been caught in more times than I care to admit publicly. Raised in an age where every possible pastime can now be monetised there is always the potential thought that you should only be doing things that you are already good at or only pursuing new hobbies with the thought of potentially using them for personal gains later. The compulsion to turn hobbies into hustle has become so strong for so many that it becomes a struggle to sustain interests that don't 'scale', leading to a serious lack of creating for the sake of creating.
I'm no stranger to this either; my LinkedIn looks like a personal diary sometimes, but I too, think that it is vital for people of any age to create spaces for themselves to just do cool things badly. Paint like a toddler, write a goofy haiku, play basketball without knowing the rules, and don't get me started on awkward dancing in the kitchen; that’s a whole other op-ed.
Hobbies don't have to be polished. They're supposed to be as messy as you like, a little embarrassing, and in an ideal world, completely useless.
The Screen is My Hobby
I'm not writing this to attack anybody, or dunk all over your nightly habits, but I do want to make it crystal clear that not having this space set out already is not your fault. Thanks to the aforementioned algorithms, the screen does a terrific job at pretending to be a hobby. Watching a YouTube video on baking isn't the same as starting your own sourdough culture, but your brain gets just enough of a dopamine hit that it feels like you participated, at least to some extent.
It's a cruel trick, isn't it? I could watch every guitar tutorial in existence and try and emulate their hand movements perfectly, convincing myself that I'm improving by osmosis. But the truth is, it's probably going to be more fun if you just mess around with it yourself. Although if you are keen on trying something new, there's no harm in learning from others.
Younger generations, especially, have been dealt a pretty rough hand in the hobby game. Just as many of us were heading out into the world, a global pandemic forced everyone back inside. Sports teams disbanded, choirs went mute, and pottery classes closed their doors. For many, Netflix filled part of the gap, and TikTok filled the rest, and as according to Newton, inertia set in. It's no wonder that asking the average 20-year-old what they get up to for fun will often result in an answer of 'nothing really'.
Now What?
Give yourself an excuse this week to spend an hour on something completely random and just go crazy with it. Obviously, don't spend hundreds of dollars on equipment for no reason, but find something you can do relatively easily for free (sketching, 3D modelling, freestyling, creating a wordsearch, writing a murder mystery, trying to juggle apples), and just do it.
Make something yours, even just for an hour. Who cares if the birdhouse you put together collapses (maybe the bird might), but take the time to create, even if it's bad.
Alex Cooper-Williams is Sprig’s senior editor. You can find his bio here.
Alex is featured in our issue 01 print . Get your copy here!