Crafting’s comeback and the science behind it
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What is driving the resurgence of crafting among younger generations?
Scrolling, streaming, swiping, for so many of us, our days are spent moving from one screen to the next. But lately, there's been a noticeable shift in the other direction. Crochet kits are selling out, knitting circles are filling up, embroidery and quilting, hobbies once stereotyped as old-fashioned, are booming. especially among younger generations. So what's behind the rise of these so-called analog hobbies? Is this just nostalgia or are brains and bodies pushing back against digital overload? Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, March 4th, 2026. Today, we're taking a deeper look at what science says about creative hobbies and whether picking up yarn, thread, or paint might actually be good for our health.
Joining me now is Daisy Fancourt, professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London and author of the recently released ArtCure, The Science of How the Arts Save Lives. Daisy, it's so good to have you here. Wonderful to be with you. We're seeing a surge in craft hobbies like knitting, crocheting, painting, and woodworking. From your perspective, what's driving this spike right now? Is there something about this historical moment that makes us more receptive to hands-on creativity? We're actually seeing this pattern as particularly being driven by younger adults. And I think that tells us a lot. We know that younger adults are actually a group that is starting to struggle with the volume of screen time and phones in their lives.
But these hobbies use hands in the same way. They've got a very similar focus in being short-term things you can do in just a few minutes. And I think part of it is this move away from our digital lives to more analog activities. But it's also a response to some of the mental health and wellbeing feelings that we're seeing in society. Many people are now experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression and stress, but activities like crafts are very good ways of regulating our emotions and reducing those symptoms. In your book, you talk about the ingredients of art, the sensory, emotional, and social components that make something artistic. When we think about a craft like knitting or quilting, what are the active ingredients at work?
Some of it is the sensory input we're getting. So actually the feel of the yarn or the thread that you're working with, the visual stimulation that we're getting from the colors and shapes that we're playing with. and also the creativity and imagination in terms of what our brains are imagining and then producing. And these ingredients are actually really powerful in then activating various mechanisms like psychological or biological processes that then help us to feel happier and better. You write that art is the, quote, forgotten fifth pillar of health alongside things like sleep, diet and exercise. That's a bold claim. What makes the arts powerful enough to sit in that category? It's funny that it sounds like a bold claim, because if you looked back even a few hundred years, everybody sang, danced, told stories, made art together as a part of everyday life.
It's only really in modern society that we've actually started to turn the arts into more of a luxury rather than an everyday essential. And actually, when we look at the evidence base, there is very strong evidence now that these activities, these creative arts activities have tangible, meaningful effects on our health. And for things like mental health, for example, we actually see benefits that are equivalent to some of those other health behaviors like physical activity. But we're just not talking about it in that way, even though the evidence is there. So Daisy, when someone sits down to crochet, what is happening in the brain and the body? What systems are being activated? So if we're enjoying that hobby and it's bringing us feelings of happiness, we know this is because there are regions at the heart of the brain involved in our pleasure response that are being activated, as well as specific reward networks like the dopaminergic reward system in our brain that leads to the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine that help us to feel happy.
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