Most of us spend a great deal of our time online, and it is now the platform of choice upon which more Canadians than ever before interact and engage with their hobbies. The range of these hobbies is wide and varied but the seven hobbies mentioned herein are the online pastimes or hobbies that Canadians just can’t seem to get enough of.
Social media has changed and adapted to suit the modern era and there are now platforms that look to suit all the users’ needs and wants on a social interaction level. As of 2022, at least 95% of Canadian adults use at least one form of social media. Whether it’s watching others game on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, or simply sharing the best vegan recipes and healthy eating ideas on food-specific social platforms, social media is the top Canadian online hobby.
Reading the news and keeping up to date with current affairs is a hobby that a larger number of Canadians than ever before have started to engage with on their smart mobile devices. A 2019 digital news survey showed that by then, already 45% of Canadians surveyed and used online sources for news and current affairs. It’s a Canadian hobby if ever there was one, and you only need to look around on the daily commute to see how many people are stuck in their smart mobiles, reading the daily papers and catching up on current affairs.
Online shopping is indeed a huge Canadian hobby. It may have been previously seen as something done for essentials, but actually, the process of finding the best buys online and then being able to share these bargains has become a serious hobby for Canadians. Canada’s online grocery market was projected to reach $3.6 billion by the start of 2020 and this type of growth is expected to be seen across all aspects and genres of online shopping. From clothing to technology and food, it is all now bought online. The fact that online shopping has also become a great deal more social has seen more shopping take place on social media platforms, which is influenced by the social interactions and engagement made on these platforms. It’s a growing hobby that shows no signs of slowing.
The rise of online casinos has been vast and rapid. As societal acceptance and legitimacy spread in North America, we have seen several professional and legitimate Canadian gambling sites that have emerged. These have started to grow in users as the hobby arguably spreads and takes root. The type of games played are generally the traditional casino games such as poker and blackjack and, based on the history of slot machines in Canada, these are also extremely popular game choices online. There are now so many reviews and recommendation sites that it is incredibly easy to find the perfect site for your needs and avoid those wherein players have experienced any issues or challenges.
Just being online and browsing through everything and anything is an online hobby that has taken the Canadian public by storm. It is possible to regard this as a hobby, simply based on the amount of time that we as Canadians spend simply trawling through the internet, with no apparent or specific rhyme or reason.
The streaming of entertainment is one of the fastest-growing online hobbies in Canada. No longer do we have to wait for the television series that we like to drop weekly in America first, and instead, these can now be streamed as and when you want to watch them. This also allows you to binge the entire series at once. There are so many paid and free streaming services in Canada and these are growing all the time, providing everything from live sport to news, movies, and the latest TV series.
Yes, it is one of the main things that Canadians do online, they look for new hobbies to learn and this has ranged from some of the simpler crafting hobbies to the most complicated of languages and computer programming. One of the main reasons to learn a new hobby is the rise of the monetized hobby and everything from candle making to learning how to program is now being learnt online, with one of the main driving reasons being the ability to then make money from these hobbies.
These are the hobbies that Canadians just can’t seem to get enough of, and it is no wonder because there is just so much to do in the genres mentioned and discussed herein. Canadians have long been known for their outdoor pursuits and outdoor lifestyle. This hasn’t changed, but we are finding that there is a younger generation that is also adding the online hobby genre to Canadian culture.
