Personally I am of the opinion that many hobbies participation numbers are in serious decline. The older participants are dying off or just getting to old to actively participate and there are fewer and fewer young people entering these hobbies.
Model rocketry and model railroading are the two I am most familiar with and out here in Western Oklahoma where I now live there is virtually zero involvement in either of those hobbies and there are no hobby shops anymore to support/encourage people if there were.
Many a year ago when I spent my youthful summers back here visiting family I would often hook up with other kids and fly rockets or play with their trains and I would always prowl the many small hobby shops in all the small towns where the various family members lived.
Gone! Gone! Gone! All of them;and they were gone long before the internet came along to kill them.
And gone with them? All the kids getting involved with what we as kids thought of as a “Hobby”.
True... but the internet didn't "kill" them... in fact, the internet is probably their best chance for life... it allows a wider variety and larger number of people to be exposed to rocketry and railroading and other hobbies... plus it's a vital area of commerce for both buying and selling rocketry and railroading supplies, products, and materials. Could you imagine having to do EVERYTHING by MAIL ORDER the way it was back in the 70's and early 80's, back when I was a kid?? I mean, we managed back then, because we didn't know any better, and there was no other way. Remember "please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery"?? Can you imagine ANYBODY thinking that's acceptable NOW?? I mean, heck, if I don't get an Amazon order in 3-4 DAYS I'm worried something went wrong. Heck even an email order from Estes usually arrives within a week. Semroc, well, heck, they seemed to have some capability to time warp-- you'd receive notification in your email that your order had been received and was being processed virtually by the time you hit "submit order" and closed the window... and by the time you read the email notification your order was being processed and closed the email, you'd have the "order shipped" notification in your inbox... The box would usually be on your porch waiting for you within 2 days... Never seen anything like it! (and sadly probably won't again).
No, what is killing hobbies is that folks don't have any PATIENCE anymore... nobody wants to take the time to actually construct anything or build anything, and not many want to go out in the heat, bugs, weeds, etc. to fly it... Most folks live in McMansions now, but nobody's got room for anything else in the house, what with a big flatscreen in every room and a bunch of electronics hooked up, and all the other stuff everybody fills their houses with (us included). Who's got room for a model railroad layout taking up massive amounts of space?? Who's got the patience to build a big layout and landscape it and do track maintenance and all the other stuff that goes along with it??
Add to it, the fact that it's a different generation. The guys who grew up with steam power, or watching their Dad's build their railroad layouts in the basement or whatever and tinkering with steam model locomotives and stuff, well, they're OUR age or older! (like my BIL who's 54, 11 years older than I... and he was one of the "kids watching his Dad the steamfan tinker with model RR stuff") His kids, (who are grown) and my kid (who's 9) don't have a clue... They've never seen a steam train outside of an amusement park, scenic railway, history channel documentary, steamfan video, museum, or model railroad layout. They don't have the "attachment" to it like the older generation did. They don't get excited about trains like the older generation did, back when 1) there were a LOT more trains and 2) trains were a big deal. It's basically the same with rockets... kids nowdays don't have much experience with it... Shuttle was "old hat" and "ho-hum" and just not a big deal to them. The wonder of going to the Moon, the fascination with the technology that made Saturn work and be such an elegant solution to the problems faced just doesn't register with them. My daughter is into it, because she's immersed in it, because I'm nuts about it and share it with her... but her peers, to them it's just something on TV, ho-hum or ancient history...
Nowdays kids have Pokémon and Hamsterball and immersive video games and yes, computer chatting, facebook, twitter, music videos, CD's, DVD's, 1000 cable/satellite channels of TV (most of it inane stupidity) and a thousand other things vying for their attention, and they rate MOST of it as MUCH more important to their daily lives than a HOBBY...
It's like that monologue by Tim Wilson... "Remember when we were kids... we had something called "going outside and PLAY"... There was this little kid who lived across the road or down the street, and he'd come over to your house and knock on the door, and you'd ask your Mom if you could go outside and play... And basically you'd hop on your bike and ride off somewhere or walk through the woods and pick up a stick and play with it or something-- toss rocks in the stream or something. Sometimes you'd pull a ball and bat out and play ball or kick a ball around or toss the football... Then we'd have something called "eating supper together"... You're Mom would call you into the house by shouting out the back door "it's time for SUPPER!" and you'd come in and wash up and sit at the table, and everybody would sit down and eat and actually talk to each other... most of the time your little friend would stay and eat with you, but sometimes you'd ask to go over to his house if his momma was making something you liked better... Sometime's you'd do something you weren't supposed to do and get into trouble, and then we had a thing we called an @$$-whoopin'... Yer Daddy would take his belt off and whip your @$$ with it and you'd cry, and you didn't do that stupid sh!t anymore... "
I have to laugh... my nephews are SO addicted to their little Gameboys or SOS's or whatever they're called that they're just MISERABLE if they have to go an hour without them... Heck even my daughter, who we've trained to do little craft projects, or read a book, or occasionally play a Roblox or other "educational" type computer game, sometimes gripes about being "bored". I've trained her not to whine to me about being "bored", because I WILL find something for her to do-- clean her room, pick up clothes, pick up around the house, clean out the car, clean up around her dog's house, etc... It's funny because we were recently visiting my wife's best friend from college up at Nashville, and her boy (who's a couple months older than my daughter) started whining at some point about being "bored" and I was like "Oh, I can fix that!" and Keira told him right off, "Oh, don't say that! Find something to do, or he'll find something for you to do you won't like!" LOL
After convincing him that if he remained "bored" I'd make him wash my car, he shut up...
Amazing what kids can do when you properly motivate them... LOL
The thing is, hobbies COST a lot more than they used to... for the most part, anyway. For instance, when I was in middle school and got started with rocketry, a good starter set with EVERYTHING you needed to start was like $15, including some motors! Nowdays you can't hardly touch one for less than about $40. (Granted that $15 bucks in 1985 was probably about the same or more than the $40 is now, but you get the point). I used to mow my grandmother's lawn for $6 per mowing... so I could buy a starter kit after mowing the yard three times... I could usually buy a pretty good rocket kit every time I mowed the yard, or a couple packs of motors... I used to pick up 18mm BP rocket motors for about $3 and some change a pack. "D" motors were like $4 a pack. Now you're lucky if you can find them for less than $15 a pack. 18mm's are a little cheaper than that of course. Kit's are more expensive yet... most are anywhere from $20-30 bucks and up, for anything of decent size and 'coolness factor'... (ie NOT E2X, RTF junk, and those aren't MUCH cheaper... and most "really cool" kits are more expensive yet.
I got into model railroading again (who didn't do a little model railroading as a kid in the 70's??) right after I got married, because my BIL was into it and I ended up working in the "train building" (model railroad club) for 4H at the county fair in Indiana during the summer... enjoyed it and got into it again... this was back around 2001-02-03, and I bought some model railroad cars and stuff that I was fascinated with-- and those things were EXPENSIVE! Finding stuff on clearance and a good railroad car would STILL run you somewhere between $10-20 bucks! Some were around $40 for a SINGLE RR car alone! I bought a set of 5 of those "articulated cars" (the cargo container box movers, with the single set of wheels (truck) between the ends of two adjacent cars, permanently attached to each other over the truck bolster pivot) and that set was like $50 bucks or so... a set of six Bethgon coalporters was like $60 bucks. I'd hate to think what they'd cost now over ten years later! Locos were REALLY expensive... upwards of $60 bucks for a little locomotive or cheapy, upwards of $70-100 or more for better/bigger ones... Heck they wanted over $7 a piece for hollow plastic "conex" boxes to put in the articulated cars, so I built my own... Railroading USED to be about as cheap of a hobby as you could get (if you had the dedicated space for it).
When I was a teenager, I wanted to fly RC planes, but back then, you couldn't TOUCH an RC setup for less than about $400 bucks... first you had to get a plane kit (and build it, which could take a few weeks/months and cost around $100 bucks with all the supplies). Then you needed an engine and props, that would be around another $100... then you'd need the radio, which was easily $100... and then servos and horns and rods and servo wiring, and fuel, batteries, incidentals, which was easily another $100... I never had the money to even THINK about it. NOW you can go buy a foamy park flyer ARF/RTF with all the gear installed, ready to go, with electric motors (no messy fuel to mix, no glow plugs, no fiddling with troublesome IC engines) and including the radio for less than $100 bucks. You can get into RC monster trucks, stadium trucks, race cars, etc., all with interchangeable parts and "hop ups" available, with electric motors (no fiddling with the troublesome IC engines) for a couple hundred or so... you can run for hours for a few pennies in electricity to charge the batteries, and maybe $20-40 bucks apiece for extra packs (depending on the batteries).
Certainly cheaper than spending $15 bucks for a three pack of "D" motors with a combined flight time of maybe 3 minutes total in a streamlined single-motor rocket... with most of that time being under parachute...
Plus, how did you find out about rocketry?? I learned about rockets from "Boys Life" magazine, back when I was a cub scout... then I found another kid in school interested in rockets and he showed me his Estes and old Centuri catalog... (right before Centuri went away). How many kids today read a magazine?? When they DO read a magazine (in school, or comic books, or whatever) what is the advertising for?? More comic books and VIDEO GAMES, for the most part, from what I've seen... Plus, most kids do what their friends are doing-- playing on the cell phone, playing video games, chatting or tweeting or facebooking or whatever, etc... only the "nerds" and "weird kids" do hobbies and stuff... it requires skills and work and practice and materials... how can you ever get "Tomb Zombies Doomed to Grand Theft Donkey Kong XXIV" if you're blowing all your parent's money on yellow wood glue and carpenter's wood filler??
That's just how it is... times change I guess...
Later! OL JR