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The Premature Death Of Hobbies

Glued with both eyes to screens, the world forgot about having hobbies…

Attila Vágó
5 min readJul 23, 2023
Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

As I was writing another draft about being an adult fan of LEGO, it hit me that I’m trying to discuss hobbies in a world that doesn’t quite appreciate them as much as it used to. I must admit, I am quite taken aback by the realisation that one device — the smartphone — has rapidly taken over our lives to the point that hobbies are far less common than they used to be. While certainly dependent on which generation we’re referring to, the number of people who identify as hobbyists is rapidly shrinking, and that worries me to no end.

I date. I date a lot. Often comically poorly, but I do what I can. As one of my friends used to say — “Bless him, at least he’s trying”. But as a person who likes to understand people and human nature, good or bad dates, I still get to learn a lot about my interlocutors — we’re talking women in their 30s — one of them being, that they typically don’t have hobbies. More often than not, the response is somewhere along the lines of:

Yeah, I guess the usual... Read sometimes, Netflix, go out with friends. I like listening to music too, going to gigs. How about you?

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Attila Vágó
Attila Vágó

Written by Attila Vágó

Staff software engineer, tech writer, author and opinionated human. LEGO and Apple fan. Accessibility advocate. Life enthusiast. Living in Dublin, Ireland. ☘️

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