July - Social Wellness Month, "How hobbies/ fourth spaces can solve the loneliness
In 2025, there were growing conversations about the need for “third spaces”- spaces outside your home and work for socializing. Think your local coffee shop or dive bar. But as remote work has become more common and loneliness continues to increase, many of these everyday gathering places feel harder to find or less central to how we spend our time. If traditional third spaces are disappearing, where are people finding community now?According to the U.S. Surgeon General, roughly half of U.S. adults suffer from the growing loneliness epidemic. This has been equated to smoking 15 cigarettes a day in terms of mortality risk. The campaign to end loneliness documented that 49.63% of adults (25.99 million people) in the UK reported feeling lonely occasionally in 2022. Traditionally, third spaces are where people could socialize outside work, but many of these spaces have become less central or accessible: cafes, bars, community centers. As these spaces have declined, “hobby communities” are increasingly becoming a “fourth space” because they offer a recurring, low-pressure place for people to belong. Climbing gyms, pottery studios, board game nights, run clubs, maker spaces, book clubs, and community gardens are filling the role that third spaces used to fill.
Think shared activities over a shared location. Maybe you don’t live on the same block, street, or neighborhood, but you join the same book club hosted in your corner of the city or join the same run club or dance class. The activity itself reduces social pressure, providing the chance for repeated social interactions in a low-stakes environment.
Hobbies also provide a sense of identity ("I'm a reader," "I'm a gardener") and connect people with communities that extend beyond a physical location into online groups, events, and competitions. We are seeing this shift as there is a decline in participation with more traditional institutions like religious groups, along with the rise of remote work and social media fatigue.
A cultural intelligence study released by Eventbrite shows that Millennials and Gen Z are the pioneers of this shift in social connections. The study revealed some key data points that reveal the deeper purpose for this shift:
Forming friendships:84% of interest-based event attendees have developed close friendships through these gatherings
Demanding in-person experiences:73% of 18-to-35-year-olds plan to attend live events in the next six months
Creating community through shared interests:45% of people surveyed cite belonging and identity as key motivators for joining communities
Finding personal growth opportunities: Nearly half of the people surveyed (45%) report that these experiences enhanced their sense of self
Blending experiences: 79% of people surveyed are drawn to events that mix multiple interests into unique social experiences
The CEO and Co-Founder of Eventbrite, Julia Hartz, shared, “What we’re seeing reveals a pivotal moment in how young people build community. This generation has unlocked something powerful – they’re transforming online interests into dynamic, in-person spaces where both community and identity take shape. What started as digital passions are becoming catalysts for meaningful real-world connections and personal discoveries, happening on their own terms.”
The research conducted by Eventbrite identified six core types of fourth spaces; Eventbrite's numbers also showed an increase for these types of gatherings: Healthy Hangouts, Live Social Shows, Culinary Circles, Game-Based gatherings, Creative Classes, and Fandom-Related festivities.
Social connections are such a big predictor of health outcomes that some in the public health community have advocated for it to be used as a prescription for overcoming loneliness- an approach called social prescribing. A professor at Harvard Chan School of Public Health who teaches a course on loneliness, Jeremy Nobel, says, “Loneliness is a gap—between the social connections we have and the ones we want to have —and that gap can be closed by changing how we make sense of loneliness and seek to address it.”Nobel founded a nonprofit Foundation for Art and Healing, with a prominent initiative using arts as a public health tool to address social disconnection. “Creativity, imagination, and self-expression can help people feel better connected to themselves, other people, and the bigger human experience,” he said. “The arts rewire our lonely brains, changing how we make sense of the social world around us, seeing opportunity where we once saw threats. That shift in perception helps people realize they can navigate loneliness before it becomes a chronic issue,” Nobel shared, per Harvard. Loneliness can feel a taboo topic, but instead of viewing it as an individual issue to problem-solve, acknowledging it rather as an outcome of changing technology and society removes some of the stigma. Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question- instead of where did all the third spaces go and why aren’t young people drinking/socializing anymore- we should look at where people are gathering now. And people often gather around something that they love to do.
Hobbies won’t replace all the roles that third spaces once held. But if we view them as opportunities for social connection and not just ways to pass the time, they can invite us back into participating in offline life and help us create new relationships. You don’t have to overhaul your life to meet new people. Just try showing up to one class or saying yes to one invitation at a time and see where it leads. When loneliness is such a widespread struggle and the desire for belonging so universal, taking the time to learn a new skill may be the easiest way to find and build community again.
Written by Hannah Lacy
Bio: Hannah Lacy is a digital content strategist with over seven years of experience in marketing and social media, and more than a decade of experience as a freelance writer contributing to various publications. A working mother of two school-aged children, she writes at the intersection of ambition and parenthood, with a passion for storytelling, advocating for working moms, and partnering with mission-driven brands and organisations.
