A pair of hands tears a page from an old magazine, eyes scanning for a phrase or image that might fit onto a slowly growing collage. There is no rush, only the pleasure of arranging, pasting and layering one memory or hope over another until the vision feels complete. Across bedrooms, cafés and university hostels, young people are spending time with hobbies that used to belong to a different generation. Hobbies like journaling, making zines, crocheting, shooting on film, putting together collages to build vision boards.
These activities aren’t part of any larger productivity hack or monetisable hustle. They thrive on repetition and offer something tactile in a moment where most of life feels like it’s been flattened into screens. These practices are being embraced by a generation trying to find something steady to hold onto, even as the world around them feels a little wobbly. Economies are crashing, climate reports are growing more urgent, and wars are continuing without resolution. At the same time, the shadow of the pandemic continues to shape the way people are perceiving the future.
Journaling, for many, has become more than a space to track thoughts or keep lists. It serves as a kind of emotional architecture, a way to structure the shapelessness of their anxiety into something legible and real. Knick-knacks like washi tape, gel pens, old photos, dried flowers are ways of reclaiming time and making the act of remembering feel more deliberate.
Zine-making, once associated with niche subcultures and protest spaces, has found its way into campus art fairs and bedroom desks. There’s a raw, unfinished quality about zines that makes it feel more honest. Uneven lines, mismatched fonts, stories told with scissors and glue instead of algorithms and ads. It’s a form of publishing that doesn’t ask for perfection and that’s part of its growing appeal.
Crocheting and knitting have now become small rituals of care. In a time when the future feels unclear and planning more than a few months ahead can feel risky, the process of turning yarn into something useful offers a sense of completion. Whether it’s a lopsided bag or a perfectly neat scarf, the result is visible, touchable, and made entirely by one’s own hands. Something rare in a world where effort gets buried under algorithms when it doesn’t come with the right hashtags or keywords.
The renewed love for film photography and old digital cameras isn’t just about vintage aesthetics or low-resolution nostalgia. There is something meaningful about taking a photo without being able to see it right away, about letting a moment pass without needing to immediately decide whether it’s good enough to share. Waiting for film to develop or going through memory cards days after a trip brings back a kind of anticipation that feels almost luxurious now.
And then there are vision boards. Personal collages built from fragments of longing, affirmation, and hope. They don’t claim to manifest miracles, but the act of sitting down, choosing images, placing them beside each other and letting them take up space on a wall or journal page creates a sense of direction that doesn’t rely on external validation. It’s less about controlling the future and more about believing there might still be something better waiting in it.
In a time when much of life feels uncertain, when young people are asked to adapt faster than ever while watching systems falter around them, these analog hobbies offer small moments of calm and clarity. They don’t solve anything and they aren’t meant to. Still, they make room for something meaningful and something that lasts.
