Screentime obsession is pretty much endemic at this point. For Gen Alpha, Gen Z, and Millennials, going without a phone can feel like losing a limb. In fact, according to one study, the average time spent on screens for people over 15 is almost eight hours a day. But all is not lost. Younger people might love their phones and computers, but they’re also logging off in record numbers and embracing a return to community-led, wholesome activities.

Many of these, like chess, bowls, and even darts, are borrowed from generations past. What your grandparents loved to do on a Friday night has now become a way for younger people to flex their creative, sporting and social muscles, all without a screen in sight. From padel to card games, it’s refreshingly old-school, while feeling simultaneously new.

Shoreditch’s Knight Club (held weekly at Cafe 1001, but currently on hiatus for the summer) started as a reaction to Netflix’s mega-popular The Queen’s Gambit, starring Anya Taylor-Joy as fictional chess prodigy Beth Harman. Younger audiences ate it up. According to some estimates, sales of chess sets and accessories rocketed by almost 215 per cent following the show’s debut. “It reignited a sense of nostalgia for the game,” says Lucia Ene-Lesikar, community and culture director at Knight Club. “I know many people learnt to play chess as children, and wanted to come back to it as adults.”

Inspired by the show and other chess nights in London, Ene-Lesikar helped set up Knight Club in August 2023. It started in a basement in Aldgate and has since bounced around before settling on its current location on Brick Lane. Punters come from all walks of life, with a big emphasis on the creative industries; photographers, fashion designers and artists have all practised their en passant and pawn promotion here. As is de rigueur for any trendy London event in 2026, live DJs play and limited brand collabs are the norm – Knight Club members have even taken their boards to 10 cities internationally, including Paris, Tokyo and Nairobi.

Knight Club members have even taken their boards to 10 cities internationally, including Paris, Tokyo and Nairobi

Despite its London-creative trappings, Ene-Lesikar insists that Knight Club didn’t make chess ‘cool’ – that was down to the young people who found and embraced the space. “I credit that to the people who come and play with us,” she says. “They are young, mostly aged 18-30, smart and interesting, and so are naturally drawn to the game. Chess is niche, but it inspires a sense of curiosity; whether you’ve been playing since you were a kid or have never touched a board before.”

A trendy chess club in Shoreditch might sound like the epitome of our post-irony age, but for the young members, it offers a chance to build a real – and genuine – sense of community. Anna, a long-time Knight Club member aged 20, agrees. “Knight Club is a really important place for me,” she says. “What I love is that you can choose your level of engagement. One day after uni I might be really tired and have low social battery, but I can pull up to Knight Club and play a casual game without any pressure. I also have days that I have a lot more energy, and I go to enjoy the music and meet some really cool people. Because it happens so regularly, if you come often you see a lot of familiar faces, and over time that can build into really deep friendships.”

In a world driven by algorithms, AI, and increasingly online connections, a game of chess can offer something even the best digital chess masters cannot: human connection. “You can tell a lot about a person when you play a game of chess with them,” says Anna. “I love the in-person social interactions being at the club. There’s a real intimacy to playing a chess game with someone else, especially when that person is a stranger.”

Lord of the Darts club

The trend isn’t limited to London. In Sheffield, Luke Faulkner has been running a monthly darts club since summer 2025. It started out as a few mates throwing arrows, then grew to the degree where they’d bring their own darts, touring boards in city pubs to find the best one. Now, Lord of the Darts, a walk-on night held monthly, has a permanent home at Gut Level, a queer-led DIY event space in the city centre.

“Lord of the Darts is a chaotic mess, still in its infancy, but we wanted to open the sport up to more than older men,” Faulkner says. Gen Z and younger millennials are famously abandoning British pubs in favour of the gym and sportier pastimes, but at the same time, the 36 per cent of young people who do socialise in pubs don’t tend to be there for the alcohol, and prefer to visit for events like quizzes. Pub darts hits the bullseye. “Darts gets you and your friends together, without the need to drink booze if you don’t want to,” says Faulkner. “It gives you a purpose for meeting up and having fun.”

Neapolitan cards Scopa

In Stockport, Craig Ballinger is also on a mission to return young people to the pub. After spending time living in Italy, he and his wife developed a taste for the card game scopa, which is played with a 40-card deck and has various complex rules you’re really best off exploring for yourself. “In Italy, it was the old men in bars playing scopa. It looked really interesting; they’re not the usual suits,” says Ballinger. They brought it back to their bar, Reddish Ale, a space designed to be “an exciting place from both a business and community-focused perspective.”

As someone who openly confesses to “hating” card games, Ballinger was won over. “Scopa is extremely easy,” he says. The first night was mostly people in their 30s, and a big success. “It's something to relax into, keeps your hands off your drink and gives a focus away from other thoughts,” he says. Given the overwhelmingly positive reaction so far, more scopa nights are well, on the cards imminently.

The Pickleball English National Singles

Not every grandpa sport requires a drink in hand. In fact, pickleball, the US export / tennis-padel hybrid, would be downright difficult to perform, even with a glass of 0%. For Josh Bright, a 22-year-old professional pickleball player from Buckinghamshire, that’s part of the appeal. For him, pickleball started out as “a fun side thing” in between sessions as a tennis coach. It quickly grew into something he and the other coaches loved and wanted to do daily. “I think the appeal is that you can just pick up a padel and play,” he says.

Pickleball isn’t your grandmother and her friends slogging away to two sets to nothing on the local tennis court. It’s faster, more fun. “My generation can feel a lot of other racket sports are easy to mentally switch off while playing,” says Bright. “Pickleball is so fast-paced and reactive that there is never a moment where you feel like you’re not doing anything.”

“Young people love the fact that they can start playing quickly, share a court with people of different ages and abilities, and enjoy both the competitive and social sides of the sport,” adds Karen Mitchell, CEO of Pickleball England. She adds that pickleball – despite drawing its origins from the sports of your grandparents – is something “genuinely different”. And in a world where younger people especially can struggle to find their place, that’s important.

There are currently 955 pickleball clubs across the UK, with venues like Dinks Clubs in Chandler's Ford in Hampshire, housing 12 tournament-grade acrylic courts in its indoor venue – with similar venues opening in Birmingham, York and Surrey, over the last 12 months.

Knight Club in Brick Lane

From the Commonwealth Games to your local club, bowls is also on the come-up among younger audiences. Along the East Sussex seafront, the Hove and Kingsway Bowling Club was recently rebuilt as part of a £15 million development that also featured a skatepark, padel courts, and a sea-view coffeeshop and restaurant. Local young people have responded appropriately. “Bowls was a game for your granddad when I was a kid,” says club chair Viv Woodcock-Downey. “Recently, we’ve seen our demographic shift. It is wonderful to see so many younger people coming along, having a go at bowling, with a smile on their face.”

With birthday parties and hen and stag parties now par for the course at many UK bowls clubs, Woodcock-Downey says the sport will continue to attract new audiences if clubs are open to new ways of doing things. “Clubs that don’t move with the times are closing down; clubs like ours, which are pushing at the boundaries, are thriving,” she says.

It’s a two-way street; young people provide new blood (and cash) for more traditional sports clubs, but the clubs know they need to morph and grow to actively attract younger patrons, something national bodies like Padel England and World Bowls (and local events like Knight Club) are actively pursuing. “It’s key to recruit this keen new demographic into clubs, and to provide the kind of club environment that keeps them coming back,” says Woodcock-Downey.

It’s about one generation providing opportunities for the next. About passing something tangible along. Showing them that what one generation holds dear can be valuable to the next, too. “There’s a reason these centuries-old games are still being played by millions of young people across the world,” adds Knight Club’s Ene-Lesikar, “There’s something magnetic about it; the more people that play, the more they want to play.”