OLD HOBBIES GIVE WAY TO NEW ADDICTIONS

Those aged 10-35 across Indian cities and villages show one common feature: they're bored. Time on hand is diverted to digital addictions that bring comfort in their repetitiveness

- HARISH BIJOOR

The young in India are bored. Despite being engaged in a frenetic lifecycle of study, work, and play, the young are bored.

They are typically bored of whatever they do. If you are studying, you are bored of studying. If you are teaching, you are bored of teaching. This boredom index varies across age groups and regions, but by and large, everyone is bored and wants to do something different. Something apart from what they are doing.

In the old days, the hobby was an escape mechanism. Today, the hobbies of yore have died. Stamp-collecting went away with the literal death of the traditional postal system itself. Penfriendship (a hobby where you made friends with people you never met through the exchange of letters) died with it as well. The birds are still around, but who wants to be a birdwatcher? Bee-keeping is a clumsy thing to do.