ty, and @kenobi_65 too!
That’s all true, but Henry Ford died in 1947
and square dancing popularity peaked in popularity in the 50s
Or 70s,
(Look at the graph at the very bottom of that pdf.)
Depending on what you count. And i think the 70s is probably more representative of how many people were involved. Also, the style of dance i mostly do (challenge dancing) wasn’t really developed until the 70s (note the “1974 SD First list of Challenge calls” from the same pdf.)
There’s some lag involved, the biggest growth happened before the numbers peaked, because people who get into the activity tend to stick around for a while. I think the growth stage was mostly in the late 50s, early 60s.
So yes, Henry Ford put a lot of money and political clout into the project, but that wasn’t the only element in its popularity, and i believe that part of that was just a fad, like hula hoops.
Like other Lovecraftian horrors, sometimes things take a life of their own.
Audiophiles? Yeah, I was considering that as an answer. Being an audiophile in the 60s and 70s really was a hobby of sorts. Listening to the albums was often secondary, useful more as a tool to evaluate your system than actually enjoy. Seems to me there was sort of a decline in the 80s.
Oh, there are still hobbyist audiophiles out there, but not to the degree I remember. As far as the younger generations, I found that my nieces and nephews won’t even take my Magnepan speakers if I try to gift them. I even offered to throw in a pretty decent recapped Adcom power amp and a couple nice subs. “You’ll be the envy of everyone on campus!” “Uh, no thanks, Uncle ZonexandScout.”
So I have a nice pair of Tyler monitors. Are they hooked into a separates sound system on a rack as they once were? Nope - just straight into a Denon integrated AV receiver plugged into my TV. Do I listen to them much? Nope. I’m in a condo that is reasonably soundproof, but I am used to keeping such odd hours that I am used to using cordless Sennheiser headphones 99% of the time.
The separate components are either in storage (a couple of things nobody wanted) or long since given away. No more vinyl, CDs only in the car. In fact 98% of the music I listen to is either in the car of on YouTube through my desktop. I do, again, have a nice pair of Sennheiser 6XX/650 headphones for my PC going through a small, reasonably inexpensive headphone amp/DAC. So I am not quite at the earbud stage. But I no longer much sweat algorithm compression or similar shit. I’m done with the audiophile fiddliness. Mostly 
.
I could maybe see audiophile stuff making something of a comeback. Today’s youth was mainly exposed to mp3 files and streaming but there’s a whole “Own your music” trend going on with younger people buying CDs and vinyl (and even cassettes). Once you start having a sizable collection of music media, and money sunk into it, the next step is to justify that cost with better audio gear. Won’t be everyone going that route but I could see it as some grounds to be interested in better preamps, speakers, etc.
Comments on hobbies mentioned upthread …
There are folks with metal detectors out wandering the beaches here in Greater Miami every day. Not many, but nobody is surprised to see somebody with their detector, their shovel-sieve on a stick, and their small waist pouch for the treasures they hope to find. I see one most times I visit a beach.
We also routinely see rollerbladers, and 4-square rollerskaters, and skateboarders, and … skating along on the various beachfront walkways & parks.
But rollerblades are definitely not a popular fad now; there’s a few individual or couples enthusiasts and that’s about it. Certainly no crowds of bladers as I was once a member of back in the late 80s / early 90s. IIRC there was one year when it was the Christmas gift for tweens through 20-somethings.
My contributions:
Going the opposite way from e.g. rollerblades we have Pickleball. It seems to be 10 or 15 years old now and is going from strength to strength. More clubs, more courts, championships on TV, burgeoning equipment sales, etc. Golf might be increasingly moribund, but pickleball is kickin’ it. And it seemingly was created as a low-speed form of tennis for geezers with failing hearts and knees that is now getting real popular with teens & 20-somethings. Plenty of genuinely young people are playing it.
OTOH …
I just returned from a trip to the California wine country. Which included a lot of one-on-one time with boutique winemakers & managers. They tell me the market for high quality to collectible wine is just cratering. And the market for mid-market wine store wine is cratering too. Grocery store wine is surviving … for now.
They are all worried about a great crash, where the public just doesn’t see wine consumption as something they want to do at all, and especially not to become knowledgeable about, have a sophisticated palate, treat wine as a major part of The Good Life, etc.
As with many other hobbies mentioned upthread, the price of play at most levels has outstripped ordinary consumer price inflation over ~40 years. The good-but-not-exotic stuff I was paying $20/bottle for in ~1990 now sells for $120/bottle. While the CPI says $60 is the correct inflation correction for $20 since then.
ISTM that the explosion in online activities that are nearly free means the hurdle to participating in all real-life hobbies has gotten larger. My e.g. $120 bottle of wine isn’t only competing with some other $50 or $75 activities, but it’s also competing with a myriads of $zero activities. And free has a logic all of its own.
That reminds me… I remember when they couldn’t build racquetball courts fast enough in the 1970s and 1980s. Now many of them are being repurposed.
In spite of demographic challenges, Morris dancing still has quite a few adherents in the U.K. - and even some in the U.S (my brother lives in Charlottesville where this group is headquartered, and finds their frequent appearances at a local pedestrian mall annoying).
Perhaps, but have you priced high-end components recently? Doing it right is pretty costly. I have an old friend who’s always been an audiophile. And as a man of means, he has the money to own the best. He sent me a long email describing his gear, with photos. It takes up a goodly part of a room and can probably shake the walls of houses a block away. All the technical specs meant nothing to me. What’s important is how it sounds. I got the impression that actually having a system like that was more important to him than the music. Even if I had the money I would never put together a system like that, but he enjoys it, so I’m happy for him, but he’s the only person I know who has a setup like that, which would be out of reach for most folks.
Fair. Though I could still see a reason for people getting into it even if they don’t go from garbage speakers to super high-end stuff in a single jump.
But I don’t disagree with your point and, in fact, the basic every increasing cost of “stuff” is a real barrier to a lot of hobbies these days, I think. You either have cheap Temu tier garbage or quickly get priced out of the hobby if you don’t have ample disposable income and fewer people have that these days.
I was somewhat involved in the industry in Japan in the late 90s and it was already past its hay days then (at least in Japan).
The typical audiophile were those who had really been into music from when they were young, and then after they became successful then in their 50s or so, they would buy high end equipment.
Like other hobbies, as people developed other interests, then not as many people were willing to spend that kind of money chasing perfection.
Nowadays, when I go to somebody’s house and they brag on their “new sound system,” it turns out to be a dozen Sonos speakers spread throughout the house. The sound source is basically a digital tablet on the wifi. Makes a great BGM system, I guess.
Nicer systems I see are almost always A/V systems (5.1 or 7.1). I seldom see classic stereo systems with two carefully selected and positioned main speakers. No sweet spots, either.
Like many other boomers, I have given in to having my system serve as an A/V source as well, but there’s still a receiver, turntable, tape deck, optical disk player, and a two-channel power amp sitting beneath the TV. Everything get set to “STRAIGHT” and “MAIN ONLY” when I play real music. (And, yes, I also have a LD player and and HD-DVD player there…just in case.) My D-Link Jukebox pulls in everything else I need from my media server in the back room.
But nobody, especially younger people, even notices it. They certainly aren’t interested in chatting about it or putting it through its paces. It’s like going to the trouble to restore a muscle car and have someone say, “Must be hard to get parts!”
You obviously don’t live in my area. There is a very active fiber arts and quilting scene around here.
Whenever I have made anything, be it large, small, original, or from a kit, they only ever ask “How long did that take you?”
I, too, know many young adults into fiber arts and quilting.
I live on the Central Coast and know a lot of folks in the wine business. The Covid pandemic saw a huge boom in sales as well as investment in increasing production. The theory in the industry is that people are still making their way through their private inventory from that time The glut of grapes is bringing down the price of those cheap grocery store bottles making it harder for the boutique vintners to justify a $50+ bottle.
I think for many hobbies the actual interest may not have declined too much, but people don’t feel the need to join a club in the same way that they used to. Gardening has come up a few times in the thread as a hobby that doesn’t seem to be in much decline, but gardening clubs, at least in the UK, have a crazy demographic issue.
My mother, age 70, has been getting involved in a few of the regional societies for specific plant groups, which arrange garden tours, sales, shows and maybe winter meetings. In multiple groups, when she showed up for her first meeting, she’s been the youngest member. In one, they tried to recruit her as the treasurer on the first time she attended a meeting because no-one else was physically really able to do it any more.
Gardening in general is doing fine here, but we’re actually in danger of losing a lot of the smaller gardening events, which is going to really impact the specialist niche growers.
Thanks for the insight. Certainly makes sense.
Between being now single and being retired, I find myself eating out a lot, not so much at home alone. I have a nice supply of both good wine and booze at home, but it mostly just decorates my space unused.
I came away from this trip with a mere two cases shipping home. I can recall trips where we brought 10 cases and came back 4 months later for another 10. Back in the day late wife and I could kill a bottle a day with no effort. Nowadays increasingly geezery me & GF take 2 days to get through 1 bottle, and that’s assuming we stay home and cook two nights in a row. Of my home stash I’m drinking maybe a bottle a month now.
As to all hobbies in general, I think the shrinking middle class, or the perception of a shrinking middle class, is a big factor. As is the 60+ hour workweek. And the need to be a helicopter parent. Hobbies were ways for adults to spend spare time and spare money away from their SO & kids. When folks perceive they have no spare time and no spare money then poof; no hobbies.
As the popularity of [whatever] hobby declines, the suppliers vanish and production runs decline. Unless the Chinese step up to provide cheap alternatives, a cost / disinvestment spiral occurs where there’s an ever shrinking variety of supplies available for every greater real prices. And relatively little in the way of new product to interest current hobbyists.
Metal detecting is a hobby I’ve always associated with older people. And by older I mean people in their 40s and up. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a person in their 20s or younger metal detecting unless they were with a parent or grandparent. And it makes sense to metal detect on a beach since you’ve got all those visitors as well as the ocean potentially churning up new stuff to find.
I keep seeing articles about younger people not drinking as much as previous generations did. Maybe they can make a sequel to Sideways and hope for the best?
That is entirely possible. In Coming Apart, Charles Murry argued the number of bowlers was actually higher today (2014 I think) than it was in 1964, but fewer people were joining leagues. For modeling, there is a plethora of tutorials available through social media that wasn’t available forty years ago. When I was a kid, the best I could do was a magazine and hope they had an article relevant to what I wanted to accomplish, but these days someone can find videos that specifically address their needs, and failing that can ask questions on Reddit.