---
title: "The Benefits of Having a Hobby, Even Once a Week"
description: "The benefits of having a hobby, from a study of 93,263 people in 16 countries: more happiness, more life satisfaction and fewer depressive symptoms."
slug: "hobbies-wellbeing-research"
publishedAt: "2026-10-13"
updatedAt: "2026-10-13"
keywords:
- benefits of having a hobby
- do hobbies make you happier
- hobbies and mental health
- creative hobbies mental health
- why hobbies are important
- hobbies and happiness study
- hobbies for wellbeing
- how to start a hobby
tags:
- psychology
- mood
- habits
---
The benefits of having a hobby show up right where you would hope: in how happy and satisfied you feel. In a study of 93,263 people aged 65 and over across 16 countries, those with a hobby reported more happiness, more life satisfaction, better health and fewer depressive symptoms. Here is what the research found, which hobbies stood out, and how to make room for one in an ordinary week.
## What Are the Benefits of Having a Hobby?
Think of the thing you do just because you like doing it. The bread on a Sunday morning, the model you are building, the song you are halfway through learning, the crossword with your coffee. It does not earn anything or impress anyone. That is sort of the point. Researchers call it leisure engagement. Most people just call it the good part of the week.
The biggest look at what that thing does for you came in 2023, in *Nature Medicine*. Hei Wan Mak, Daisy Fancourt and colleagues brought together five long-running studies of older adults in 16 countries, everyone 65 or older. Across the board, having a hobby went with:
- **More happiness.**
- **More life satisfaction.**
- **Better health, as people rated it themselves.**
- **Fewer depressive symptoms.**
These were modest effects, the steady kind that add up over years rather than a sudden transformation. But they held across countries with very different ways of living, where hobby rates ranged from about one in two older adults in Spain to 96% in Denmark.
The natural question is whether happier people simply pick up hobbies. The researchers checked. When they followed people over time, having a hobby went with more happiness, more life satisfaction and fewer depressive symptoms later on, even after accounting for how people were doing to begin with. In their words, the links "were not merely the result of good psychological health predicting hobby engagement." They think it most likely runs both ways, and they are careful to say that this kind of observational data cannot prove cause. For anyone hoping a hobby might help, that is an encouraging place to start.
## Which Hobbies Seem to Help Most?
A 2022 study in *Social Science & Medicine* by Jessica Bone and colleagues looked closer. It followed 19,134 Americans over 50 for eight years and asked about specific activities. Three weekly ones stood out, each going with roughly 15 to 19% lower odds of depressive symptoms two years later:
- **Baking or cooking something special.**
- **Working on a hobby or a project.**
- **Going to a club.** Sport, socializing or something else.
Reading, writing and sewing did not show a consistent link in this study. That is no reason to put the book or the sewing down. This study measured depressive symptoms, which is only one of the things a hobby can touch.
One gentle way to read the pattern: the activities that stood out involve making something, being with other people, or both. A special meal you cooked is hard not to share. A club is people by design. And a project you are absorbed in is a reliable doorway into [the lose-track-of-time feeling researchers call flow](/blog/flow-state-research).
## Do Hobbies Help If You're Younger?
Most of the strongest evidence comes from adults over 50, because that is who the big long-term studies follow. The research on younger adults is thinner, but it points the same way.
In 2009, Sarah Pressman and colleagues pooled four studies of 1,399 adults aged 19 to 89. The people who spent more time on enjoyable leisure came out ahead on a surprising list: lower blood pressure, lower cortisol, smaller waists and lower BMI, along with feeling physically better, more positive and less depressed. It was a snapshot, so it cannot say which came first, but it spanned nearly the whole adult lifespan, so this is not only a retirement story.
And a 2025 scoping review of hobbies and mental health, by Michelle Cleary and colleagues, found that several studies reported lower depression, anxiety or stress among people with hobbies, along with better quality of life and more social connection. The authors say more research across different groups is still needed, so the picture is steady and still coming into focus.
## How to Make Room for a Hobby This Week
You do not need a big new identity, just a little protected time for something you enjoy. A few easy ways in:
- **Start with what you already like.** The one you would happily do on a free afternoon without being asked.
- **Protect one small weekly slot.** An hour on Saturday morning or one evening after dinner. Weekly was the rhythm that stood out in the research, and [scheduling things you enjoy](/blog/behavioral-activation-research) is a well-studied way to lift your mood.
- **Let yourself be a beginner.** The doing is the point.
- **Give it a home.** Leave the guitar on a stand instead of in its case, and keep the yarn or the sketchbook where you sit. [Making a habit easy to start](/blog/friction-wellbeing-habits) does more than willpower, and a hobby is no exception.
- **Make something, or make it social.** Cook something special and invite someone over, which also turns it into [a shared meal](/blog/shared-meals-wellbeing). Or find a club where the hobby comes with people attached.
- **Pick an old one back up.** The guitar in the closet and the sketchbook on the shelf count. Coming back to something you loved is one of the easiest starts there is.
## Make Room for Something That's Yours, with Positive
The Positive app is built around small, chosen moments like this one. Set a Daily Reminder for the evening you are keeping for your hobby, and let the day's quote be the cue to put the to-do list down and pick up the thing you love. One good line, then an hour that is just yours. No accounts, no ads if you go Premium, and it is free to download.
Do the thing you love. Make a little room for it this week.
## Sources
- Nature Medicine, Hobby Engagement and Mental Wellbeing Among People Aged 65 Years and Older in 16 Countries (Mak, Noguchi, Bone, Wels, Gao, Kondo, Saito, and Fancourt, 2023)
- Social Science & Medicine, Engagement in Leisure Activities and Depression in Older Adults in the United States (Bone, Bu, Fluharty, Paul, Sonke, and Fancourt, 2022)
- Psychosomatic Medicine, Association of Enjoyable Leisure Activities With Psychological and Physical Well-Being (Pressman, Matthews, Cohen, Martire, Scheier, Baum, and Schulz, 2009)
- Issues in Mental Health Nursing, Exploring the Impact of Hobbies on Mental Health and Well-Being: A Scoping Review (Cleary, Le Lagadec, Thapa, and Kornhaber, 2025)