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Eleanor Eden, 24, recently swapped a “pretty chronic social media addition” with crochet and knitting. During the Covid pandemic, it became “easy to spend all day” looking at screens, and knitting was her escape hatch.
Eden, a junior legal secretary from Manchester, is one of a new wave of young people cutting back on screen time and taking up knitting, sewing and embroidery instead. “It feels a million times more productive and better for my mental health,” she says.
Eden says her generation is “quite gloomy about the general state of things”, with a competitive job market and feeling “we’re probably never going to be able to buy a house”. In this context, she says, it’s crucial to counterbalance the darkness with a rewarding creative passion.
Young knitters, sewers and embroiderers have shared stories with the Guardian.
For Eden, it tends to be giving items to loved ones that motivates her: a hoodie she made for her boyfriend, or the cardigan knitted for her mother – while she was undergoing cancer treatment – in her favourite colour, burnt orange. Eden found solace in making her something meaningful. “She is now cancer-free! And wears the cardigan all of the time,” Eden says.
Eden also loves reworking old clothes. “I’m really big on visible mending,” she says, inspired by kintsugi, the Japanese art of joining with gold. “The environmental side is massive – you’re saving yourself money and you’re saving it from going to landfill.”
‘Mastering this craft has become an obsession’
Jonathan Lasham previously scrolled X while going to work, and he would often arrive agitated and irritable. “There was always something to get angry about in the world,” he says.
But now, Lasham commutes to his job as a postdoctoral researcher with knitting needles on his lap – typically working on socks to give as gifts – and arrives at work calm and relaxed. “Not only am I avoiding doom-scrolling, I’m also creating something for someone I care about,” says Lasham, a Liverpudlian in Helsinki.
“The act of knitting makes me feel grounded and peaceful,” Lasham says. “It’s really improved my relationship with my phone.”
He began knitting in 2022 during a time of poor health. “Knitting became a lifeline – it distracted me from the pain and gave me purpose”, he says. Beforehand, Lasham did not identify as a creative person. But knitting became an outlet for artistic expression.
He made a bespoke mohair jumper for his partner, and recently bought a book on 1980s sweaters – Fair Isle patterns, intarsia designs, Swiss darning techniques – to work on in 2025. “I feel constantly challenged,” he says. “Mastering this craft has become an obsession.”
‘We’ve grown up with a clothing overconsumption culture’
When Lily Starkey’s A-level exams were cancelled in 2020, she took up embroidery and crochet, then knitting about a year ago. She finds fibre arts the perfect way to avoid the overstimulation of short-form video content.
“For my generation, we’ve grown up scrolling on screens, and with a massive clothing overconsumption culture,” the 21-year-old says. Making her own garments helped Starkey see how much labour and “time and effort” is involved – and allows clothes to have longevity and fit correctly.
Starkey, a biochemistry student on her placement year in Oxford, joined a “social stitch” club and found a “massive community for young knitters out there, I’ve met some amazing friends”. After Starkey was in a traffic collision in 2022, she says “having that community and distraction was such a godsend” during recovery.
“When you’ve got something on your needles or on your crochet hooks, it’s like the anticipation of having an order on its way,” says Starkey, who recently made an alpaca wool raglan sweater.
She urges young people: “If you feel like you’re spending too much time on your phone, or if you feel lonely: pick up a hook, go to your local knitting group and find some other people.”
‘You’ve got a different relationship with the world around you’
The knitting habit began in about 2013 for Emma Clement, a 31-year-old tech consultant from Newcastle, to de-stress at university. Then the Covid pandemic gave her time and space to improve her technique.
For Clement, who says her brain works methodically, knitting is a way to engage her creativity. Through choosing the yarn, colour and pattern, “you can bring your personality into absolutely everything,” she says.
Clement constructed a chunky jumper in 2023 from yarn her partner bought in the Falkland Islands. Her fried-egg toilet-seat cover, knitted after the pandemic always attracts comments. (Friends suggest adding an avocado bath mat.)
Clement loves the pace of knitting; how weeks and months get embedded within an item – and garments transform into time capsules. “They go to show the seasons in your life, what’s important at that time – it’s quite precious how these are permanent representations of what you’re up to,” she says.
Now, knitting means she is constantly hunting for striking designs worth the time investment. “It’s like you’ve got a different relationship with the world around you,” she says.
‘I don’t want to monetise my hobby’
“It feels so good to know something is made completely by you,” says Chloe Loraine, a 32-year-old tech worker from London. She feels a sense of pride (“thanks, I made it”) when getting wardrobe compliments.
Loraine had knitted occasionally since childhood but took up sewing during Covid amid frustration that clothes she bought rarely fit properly. She got a sewing machine and learned how to use it through books and YouTube videos.
Now she makes complicated garments herself, such as a houndstooth jacket inspired by Chanel, that are cheaper, sustainable and free of fast fashion’s labour exploitation.
People have suggested Loraine sells her creations. But “I don’t want to monetise my hobby,” – she wants to keep every ounce of enjoyment to herself.
