Online Hobby Groups Can Reduce Isolation

online-hobby-groups

Why

Pursuing hobbies regularly — gardening, cooking or knitting, just to name a few — can provide joy and can also help maintain mental agility, research suggests. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, people socialized with others who shared the same interests at live events, meetings and gatherings. That is much harder today. Luckily, finding online hobby communities is easy. Here is how to find and make the most of these groups, which could be a source of new and lifelong friends.

Try this today

• Find established groups. Look for groups with many members and a long track record, details you can either find on a group’s About page or deduce by a string of active online conversations. GardenWeb fits this bill for gardeners, Ravelry for knitters, and the ChefSteps forum does so for home cooks. Online groups you find on the web site meetup.com could work too, especially if that group has a long track record.
• Protect financial information. Most online hobby groups are free and should not require you to divulge any financial information. If you are required to enter full banking details just to ask a question, find another group.
• Get the lay of the land. Many hobby sites are divided into interest groups — for example, Ravelry has pages dedicated to different patterns. Take some time to learn how the site you are interested in is organized.
• Ask or answer a question. At the core of online hobby groups are discussion boards in which people can pose various questions — perhaps about the right temperature for baking a chocolate cake, or when best to plant tomato seeds for your climate. After you’ve done some research, ask your first question — or go right ahead and answer a question that draws upon your expertise. Be polite and collegial; these groups work best with an ethos of trust and respect.
• Assume a leadership role. After participating as a member in your favorite online groups for a while, consider becoming a leader who welcomes new members (like you used to be!) and sets policies for the groups.