You don’t have hobbies, you have pastimes

By definition, a hobby is something done for pleasure in one’s free time, but what counts toward that very vague definition isn’t always so obvious. Modern activities designed for relaxation, procrastination or even escapes from reality can easily be labeled as a “hobby.” Doomscrolling, watching TV or going out to eat are all ways in which most people fill spare time, but not everything that fills actually adds.

From the time I switched high schools mid-junior year to when I graduated, I was a shell of a human. I went to school, did my homework and then spent the rest of the evening doomscrolling until the next day, when I did it all over again. Life was tough, and doomscrolling felt like an escape. In college, I learned to spend less time passively consuming and more time actively creating by developing hobbies like going to the gym, baking, cooking and reading novels. 

The digital space makes it so easy to numb life through constant exposure to dopamine and stimulation. The average U.S. teenager spends 4.8 hours on social media per day, and at my worst, my own screen time was similar. The concern is less the number and more how quickly that number can pass and blur together. 

Passive consumption is easy because it doesn’t require doing much of anything. You can sit back, observe and disconnect, almost as if you become a spectator of someone else’s life. In my peak doomscrolling days, I envied the lives I saw online because I was miserable in my own. Eventually, I realized I was alive, but not truly living.

True hobbies are active and often require creating something, learning a new skill or developing expertise. They don’t just fill or pass idle time: they shape your life. Engaging in active hobbies can reduce stress and create a sense of identity and accomplishment that passive habits can’t. 

That shift in use of free time doesn’t happen all at once. For me, developing real, active hobbies happened slowly. Each page of a new book I turned, each workout I finished and each time I spent cooking rather than eating out began to reshape how I spent and experienced my time. When I started filling my time with activities that required attention and effort, I shifted from a spectator of others’ lives to an active participant of my own. I realized that all these things I saw people doing online, such as cooking elaborate meals, decorating beautiful cookies, pushing themselves in their workouts, among other activities I adopted, I could do too. 

Having active hobbies is less about productivity-maxxing and more about finding your identity. Like most things in life, passive consumption is okay in moderation. I still have nights where I scroll for too long or binge-watch TV, but those moments no longer define me. The difference now is that I spend more of my time doing things that interest and challenge me while still being enjoyable and making the difficult, mandatory work in my life worth doing.

There’s a difference between filling time and experiencing it. I used to just try to get through my days, but now, I live them.

Cintron is a journalism junior from Houston, Texas.

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