Why your screen-free hobby is probably someone else’s Instagram content

There is something funny about Gen Z’s current relationship with their phones. After years of being told to touch grass, we are finally doing it. We are signing up for pottery classes, going to book clubs, painting tote bags, learning to crochet, joining run clubs, and finding increasingly niche hobbies that involve being around actual people.

The appeal is pretty obvious: you get to do something with your hands, talk to people face-to-face, and spend a few hours without staring at a screen. Offline hobbies have become part of a wider shift towards slower, more tangible ways of spending time, with pottery, crafts, reading groups, and other IRL activities gaining popularity among younger people.

Except there is one tiny problem. You may have put your phone away, but someone else probably hasn’t. That pottery workshop you attended to escape Instagram is now on someone’s Story. The book club has become a cute reel. The bag painting workshop has a perfectly edited montage with shots of everyone laughing, choosing colours, and holding up their finished totes.

Suddenly, your wholesome little attempt to disconnect has become content. This raises a slightly ridiculous question: are we actually going offline, or are we just participating in a different kind of online content?

The 'contentification' of going offline

The rise of offline hobbies is very real. Young people are looking for ways to spend time away from constant notifications and the endless pressure to post, and in-person hobby groups offer an easy way to do that. But social media has a funny way of following us everywhere. A pottery studio can become the backdrop for a reel, a meditation session becomes a carousel, and a cooking class becomes a “come with me” vlog. Even the act of going phone-free can become something worth filming.

Now, this isn’t necessarily sinister. Sometimes people simply want to remember what they did, share a cool place with friends, or recommend a workshop. The problem is that the line between experiencing something and documenting the experience is getting increasingly blurry.

The irony gets even better when the offline activity itself becomes trendy because of social media. Crafting, analogue hobbies, and creative workshops are being discovered through Instagram in the first place. The entire "offline" movement has become content, with people showing off their screen-free hobbies online.

So what's the point?

There is nothing wrong with taking a picture of your pottery mug or posting your book club outfit. The internet is, after all, the very place most of us find these communities in the first place. It becomes a problem when every experience begins to feel like it needs a visual record.

Because then you are sitting at a table, painting a bag with your friends, and somewhere in the back of your mind you are wondering whether this would make a good Story. Or you are reading at a book club and thinking about the photo you could take of the stack of books. You are technically offline, but mentally, you are still thinking about the feed.

Maybe Gen Z’s offline era needs a slightly less glamorous definition. You don’t have to delete Instagram. You don’t have to leave your phone at home. You can simply do something because you enjoy doing it, without turning it into proof that you have a life.

And if someone else happens to film it? Fine. Just remember that the whole point of going offline was that you were supposed to be living the moment, not auditioning for someone else’s reel.

Lead image: Getty Images

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