Last month, I applied to a 
study abroad program in Paris 
and had to fill out an application 
with an “activities” section. 
My heart sank. I got the same 
feeling as when a professor, 
attempting an icebreaker, asks: 
“What do you like to do for fun?” 
To be truthful, what I like to do 
for fun is send TikToks to my 
roommates as they sit right next 
to me doing the same, but that 
didn’t seem like an acceptable 
answer to present to my upper 
level psychology course on the 
first day. 
The 
application 
question 
forced me to ask myself a 
question that I sadly had no 
immediate answer to: What do 
I choose to actively do for fun, 
with no social, economic or 
otherwise measurable reward 
involved? 
I used to have hobbies. I used 
to play softball and volleyball, 
write 
poems 
and 
creative 
stories and play guitar and bass. 
So what changed? 
Answering 
this 
question 
made me sad. I hadn’t realized 
how this noticeable lack of 
hobbies in my life has made me 
feel less fulfilled until I had to 
confront it, and now I haven’t 
stopped thinking about it. 
As it turns out, American 
hobbies are a byproduct of the 
historical context in which 
they were created. During the 
Industrial Revolution, as long, 
dreadful hours in factory lines 
became 
more 
normalized, 
labor unions began forming, 
advocating for shorter working 
hours and five-day work weeks. 
The result was an increase in 
free time. People began picking 
up hobbies as a way to fill the 
hours in between work with 
something pleasurable, while 
still not wasting the day away. 
Additionally, 
the 
Great 
Depression and World War II 
in the mid 20th century created 
a national landscape of tension 
and apprehensiveness. As the 
author of an article about “How 
Hobbies Infiltrated American 
Life” describes, anxiety and 
low employment are the perfect 
cocktail to ensure a rise in 
hobbies. 

Not only were hobbies used 
to kill time, they also acted 
as an escape from whatever 
reality plagued the country 
or one’s individual anxieties. 
COVID-19 is a prime example 
of how national and personal 
distress led people to find 
refuge in kitchen hacks like 
whipped coffee and making 
sourdough bread. Hobbies give 
people a sense of purpose and 
enrichment. 
Research 
even 
shows 
that 
engagement 
in 
hobbies for personal pleasure 
is associated with higher levels 
of psychological and physical 
health. 
As illustrated by the book 
“Hobbies: 
Leisure 
and 
the 
Culture of Work in America,” 
it is clear that in times of 
distress, the American public 
turns to hobbies as a means 
of 
“productive 
leisure.” 
There is a clear oxymoron 
here, and it seems that 21st 
century capitalism has put an 
emphasis on the “productive” 
part of hobby creation and 
maintenance. 
Maybe this is the reason I 
don’t have hobbies the way I 
used to. I am too busy being 
“productive,” keeping myself 
busy with other things society 
has deemed more beneficial and 
important 
than 
unnecessary 
activities of pleasure. I have 
a full school schedule, a job 
and engage in extracurricular 
activities 
that 
would 
look 
impressive 
on 
a 
resume. 
Hobbies, without any monetary 
or 
professional 
benefit 
to 
myself, have been put on the 
backburner.
It’s not that the activities 
I do engage in don’t bring 
me joy – they do. But, adding 
extrinsic rewards (i.e. money, 
good grades, a job interview) 
to something that one already 
finds 
pleasurable 
changes 
the nature of the activity and 
decreases the intrinsic value 
from engaging in the activity. 
This isn’t to say that my 
experience of losing interest in 
hobbies as life has gotten busier 
is the norm. If someone spent 
approximately 
ten 
minutes 
scrolling on TikTok, they would 
be bombarded with extremely 
talented 
painters, 
dancers 
and bakers, all showing off 
their skills in an entertaining, 

accessible format. It’s not that 
hobbies don’t exist anymore, but 
they have become something 
to gawk at and commercialize, 
rather than something to find 
intrinsic, 
personal 
pleasure 
from. 
As content creators showcase 
their talents and hobbies online, 
consumers gobble up this media 
with delight. Sometimes just 
watching another person engage 
in a hobby satisfies the creative 
itch that instigates a desire 
for hobbies in the first place. 
Watching someone crochet a 
hat and shirt entertains me to 
no end, but doesn’t necessarily 
encourage me to engage in a 
similar act myself. 
The fact is, leisure time 
is 
spent 
very 
differently 
today than it was even just 
two decades ago. In a study 
conducted 
by 
Swedish 
researchers that analyzed three 
cohorts of young adults from 
1990-2011, 
they 
found 
that 
there has been a decrease in 
time spent on in-person social 
interactions, reading and other 

offline activities. All the while, 
time spent online increased 
considerably, 
including 
activities like watching TV. 
Findings 
from 
the 
Pew 
Research Center corroborate 
this idea, showing that teens 
experience less leisure time 
than they did a decade or two 
ago. Current teens spend more 
time on homework and sleeping 
than their peers did in the 
90s. But, besides those two 
activities, the majority of the 
former group’s time is spent on 
screens.
In addition to this, time spent 
by teens in other activities such 
as socializing and enjoying 
extracurriculars has declined, 
reaching barely over an hour 
a day. With screens readily 
available to entertain, captivate 
and 
distract, 
the 
drive 
to 
spend this limited leisure time 
creating and actively doing 
instead 
of 
consuming 
has 
become less appealing. 
Even though we know that 
hobbies provide immeasurable 
color to our lives and actually 

contain health benefits, they 
are harder to maintain in a 
society that values productivity 
and money-making.
In an article advocating for 
the importance of hobbies in 
the 21st century, a section is 
dedicated to how easy it is to 
turn a hobby into a career. But, 
doesn’t that defeat the purpose 
of hobbies in the first place? 
Hobbies, at their essence and 
origin, were an escape from 
work. Using the incentive of 
a career as a reason to adopt a 
hobby shows just how much 
the meaning and purpose of 
hobbies has changed. 
At the same time, if social 
clout 
or 
monetary 
rewards 
are 
incentivizing 
people 
to 
maintain and showcase their 
hobbies, I can’t claim that this 
is necessarily a bad thing. If 
anything, I applaud and admire 
people who create careers based 
on activities they truly enjoy. 
Work should be enjoyable, but I 
wonder if once a hobby becomes 
“work,” can it still be classified 
as a hobby?

It 
can’t 
be 
deliberately 
concluded that in an age of 
technology and productivity, 
hobbies 
have 
completely 
fallen to the wayside. But, 
they have shifted from their 
original purpose as personally-
motivated, 
anxiety-quenchers 
and free-time-fillers.
Obviously, 
we 
live 
in 
a 
completely 
different 
society 
than 
the 
19th 
century 
Industrial Revolution, and the 
way we spend our leisure time 
has changed and adapted with 
it. As long as we keep creating 
and continue to find pleasure in 
these activities (whether we get 
paid for them or not), hobbies 
will remain an essential lifeline 
for those bogged down with 
work and the sad realities of our 
modern world. 
So, to answer the question on 
my study abroad application, I 
guess writing about the collapse 
of 
genuine, 
intrinsically 
motivated hobbies is what I 
“do for fun”...in addition to 
watching TikToks with my 
friends.

Around every online corner, 
someone is trying to sell you 
something. Advertisements for 
Grammarly play before, during 
and 
after 
YouTube 
videos. 
Online shopping ads show up 
on social media, streaming 
platforms and message boards. 
These ads intrude our casual 
web browsing and interrupt 
our 
scrolls 
through 
news 
articles. Just now, I couldn’t 
look up a synonym for ‘intrude’ 
without 
seeing 
an 
ad 
for 
children’s Zyrtec — and I don’t 
have allergies nor do I have a 
kid.
Online ads are everywhere, 
but the fact that they subtract 
a couple seconds of my time 
has 
always 
been 
a 
minor 
inconvenience. For most of 
my life, I dismissed these ads 
as a normal part of existing 
half of any given day in front 
of a screen. But recently I’ve 
grown a little more skeptical. 
When I see a Zyrtec ad, I’m left 
wondering why I was shown 
their product. 
If I’m browsing the web, 
and I click the little ‘x’ to 
close out a pop-up ad, Google 
replaces the image with two 
links: ‘Stop seeing this ad’ and 
‘Why this ad?’ This second 
link opens a new tab in which 
Google explains that the ad 
was selected based off of “(My) 
activity on Google on this 
device.” 
This sounds innocuous — at 

least Google would like you to 
think so.
I think of ads on television as 
veering into manipulative, but 
that’s different. Online ads are 
just there in the background. 
So what’s the issue?
Well, Google is keeping tabs 
on our online presences. Many 
of us take this notion in stride, 
swallowing our discomfort in 
exchange for the regular use of 
our technology, but I want to 
know exactly how the so-called 
“Tracking Industry ‘’ came 
to be — especially because it 
might be on its way out.
In April of 2021, Apple 
introduced a pop-up window 
to their products in which 
users can “Ask App not to 
Track” their personal data. At 
first, I barely bat an eye at the 
release of this new feature. But 
now I realize it has massive 
implications for the future of 
the internet. 
But before I looked to the 
internet’s future, I had to 
understand the past. I’m old 
enough to have grown up 
alongside the internet, but 
young enough to have never 
questioned 
why 
and 
how 
it’s always been there. To 
understand how the free online 
services I use, such as Google, 
are paid for, I dug into the story 
of the internet’s origins. 
There is no singular answer 
as to who invented the internet 
as we know it today. Many 
individuals 
contributed 
to 
the technology that we are 
presently familiar with as ‘the 
web.’ Starting in 1966, The 

United States Department of 
Defense funded the Advanced 
Research 
Projects 
Agency 
Network, or ARPANET, which 
was one of the technological 
building blocks for the modern 
internet. Using this technology, 
information could be securely 
transferred between computers 
at Pentagon-funded research 
labs. 
Access to the ARPANET 
grew in 1981 when the National 
Science 
Foundation 
funded 
network access for University 
computer scientists. At this 
point in time, what the NSF 
coined the ‘Computer Science 
Network’ was still intended 
primarily for communication 
among 
remote 
computers. 
By 1990, partnerships with 
corporations such as IBM and 
AT&T began the transition of 
ARPANET technology into the 
private sector. 
Eventually, 
what 
was 
initially a technology intended 
for 
secure 
communication 
between computers at different 
locations ballooned into one 
of the most ubiquitous tools in 
human history: the internet. 
In 1994, Lou Montulli created 
a way for websites to place a 
small file on every computer 
that visited the site, tracking 
their activity. He named this 
file the ‘cookie’. The ‘cookie’ 
turned the average internet 
user’s 
personal 
information 
into a resource. Companies 
could now take advantage of 
internet users’ online activity 
to market relevant products to 
them. These digital ads were 

the rocket fuel that shot the 
tech giants we’re familiar with 
today — Facebook, Google and 
Twitter — to the top of the 
digital food chain. 
But now, the $350 billion 
digital ad industry is on thinner 
ice than ever. According to 
Sheri Bachstein, global head of 
IBM Watson Advertising and 
The Weather Company, “With 
all the changes happening in 
advertising with privacy, and 
identifiers and cookies being 
eliminated by the big tech 
companies, if all your revenue 
depends on advertising, that’s 
going to be challenging in the 
near future.”
It’s remarkable to think that 
the internet could undergo 
such a dramatic shift. Alphabet, 
Google’s 
parent 
company, 
makes more than 80% of its 
revenue from advertising. 
Then 
again, 
it’s 
not 
uncommon 
for 
companies 
who 
provide 
an 
online 
service to make their money 
independently 
of 
digital 
advertising.
As a University of Michigan 
Student, my access to Canvas 
plays a significant role in my 
success. Fortunately, my data 
appears to be in good hands. A 
brief inquiry into the Canvas 
Privacy Policy reveals that 
Instructure, the developer of 
Canvas, does not “sell or rent 
your personal information to 
third parties.” As a Learning 
Management Software, Canvas 
makes money by charging ‘a 
one-time implementation fee 
and an annual subscription fee 

based on an institution’s total 
number of users.’
With personal data becoming 
more difficult to justify as a 
means to generate revenue for 
tech companies, subscription 
fees and other charges may 
become more commonplace on 
the internet. Services such as 
YouTube Premium may become 
the norm, wherein users pay 
a subscription fee in order to 
access an ad-free platform, 
or otherwise continue to use 
YouTube for free in exchange 
for constant advertising. 
And 
there’s 
power 
in 
marketing. Ads become a part 
of our collective consciousness. 
If I asked someone how much 
fifteen minutes could save 
me on car insurance, they’d 
know. 
Nevertheless, 
digital 
ads might not be as effective 
as their creators think — like 
that Zyrtec ad I keep coming 
back to. I could speculate that 
Zyrtec picked up on some 
slight indication from one of 
my Google searches that I was 
looking for allergy medicine.
But the kicker is that I don’t 
know 
whether 
Zyrtec 
had 
my data or not, and that is 
concerning enough. 
In theory, the targeting of 
ads based on a user’s expressed 
interests seems like an efficient 
way to get more people to buy 
more things. So it would seem 
counterintuitive that in 2018 
when the New York Times 
ended its behavioral targeting 
in 
Europe, 
its 
advertising 
revenue 
did 
not 
decrease. 
Anecdotally, 
I 
rarely 
ever 

buy the products that are 
advertised digitally to me, even 
when they do fit my interests.
But the truth is, this isn’t 
about me. It’s about how much 
my data will sell for. 
In 2014, when Cambridge 
Analytica 
obtained 
the 
Facebook 
data 
of 
tens 
of 
millions 
of 
users 
to 
‘sell 
psychological 
profiles 
of 
American voters to political 
campaigns,’ 
the 
hashtag 
#DeleteFacebook 
started 
trending on Twitter. Herein 
lies the problem; When one 
online platform violated the 
privacy of its users, the public 
took to another online platform 
to criticize the first one. When 
we live our lives ‘chronically 
online,’ our data is always at 
stake. 
Deleting Facebook doesn’t 
sound so bad, but deleting the 
internet is not an option. The 
vast reservoir of information 
available to me is like having 
a second brain. I’m constantly 
one firing of a motor neuron 
away from all the information 
I need.
So, as wary as I am of 
corporations preying on my 
data, I’m equally aware that 
using the internet requires 
individual action on my part 
to protect that data. Knowing 
which companies I can trust 
with my information and which 
I cannot make all the difference 
for a secure interaction with 
the world wide web.
At the end of the day, data 
privacy will win me over faster 
than any online ad ever could.

Wednesday, October 19, 2022 — 7
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
S T A T E M E N T

CONNOR O’LEARY HERRERAS
Statement Columnist
Digital ads: The struggle between gratuity and privacy

The rise and fall of genuine hobbies

ELLA KOPELMAN
Statement Columnist

Design by Abby Schreck