By Alesandra Dubin, published in Southern Living Magazine, October 21, 2025.
From fiber arts and gardening to puzzles and baking, “grandma hobbies” are having a major moment. Most of us are addicted to our screens and our media and generally accept that we've become slaves to our algorithms in the age of constant digital stimulation. (Sigh.)
Amid all of these technological assaults, something quietly revolutionary is happening; people are turning to “old-fashioned” hobbies. Indeed, the tactile and analog pleasures of days gone by are having a renaissance right now… and it's not just about nostalgia. It's about burnout, digital overload, social media pressures; we've finally had enough (or at least enough to merit short offline breaks for simpler pleasures). Many of us are yearning for a slower pace and more tangible satisfaction.
Mental health experts suggest that hands-on hobbies like crochet, puzzle-making, and baking foster mindfulness and reduce anxiety by activating our senses, grounding us in the moment, and shifting focus from perfection to process. And they say it's a great thing.
Why We're Reaching for Yarn Again
These grandma-style hobbies invite us to slow down, be present, and find joy in simple, tactile experiences. These activities ground us in rhythm, texture, and sensory detail, something our minds crave when we’ve been overstimulated by digital noise. That grounding effect is more than metaphorical. These slow, repetitive movements actually shift the body’s stress response. When you knit, garden, or knead dough, your body interprets that as grounded, and calmness.
Social media and website algorithms feed us content faster than we can chew it. Grandma hobbies replace that mental indigestion with gentle focus, satisfaction, and calm. It’s the same principle that makes yoga or meditation beneficial. There’s no app, no timer, no script, just a natural rhythm that pulls you into the moment. Meaningful experiences occur.
You can see the revival everywhere—in the resurgence of knitting circles and community quilting bees, the rise of puzzle nights, and the popularity of garden-to-table living. These once-humble activities are reclaiming their place not as quaint relics, but as powerful tools for well-being. We are released from the Attention Economy. Whether you’re tending herbs on a windowsill, playing a card game with friends, or stitching something by hand, you’re doing more than passing the time. You’re giving your nervous system permission to downshift. You’re reclaiming stillness in a noisy world.
Embrace imperfection:
These hobbies are therapeutic, not because we’re perfect at them, but because they allow mistakes, spontaneity, and joy in making. Don’t point out your mistakes; see them as divinely inspired points of focus that are not often even allowed in the digital world. Consider a knitted prayer shawl. It may have 96,000 correct stitches and only 6 mistakes. That’s a fairly good batting average! If you are not quite ready to overlook a few mistakes, just look at the opposite side, literally and figuratively. Mistakes seen on the purl side are often invisible on the knit side.
"I’ve missed more that 9,000 basketball shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeeded." -Michael Jordan
12/14/2025