PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — In an era dominated by social media and endless scrolling, a growing number of young adults are turning to board games and tabletop activities, including Mahjong and Catan.<\/p>\n
One group experiencing that growth is the Philly Mah-jawns Mahjong club, which has seen its number of newcomers double over the past year.<\/p>\n
Mike Lee, president of the Philly Mah-jawn Mahjong club, said attendance at the group’s weekly meetups has increased significantly.<\/p>\n
“At our weekly meetups at the board game cafes, we would usually see anywhere from 20 to 25 people a week, and now we’re regularly seeing 50, 55,” he said.<\/p>\n
The club opened its space in Old City in 2025, though Lee said the organization has been active since 2019.<\/p>\n
Mahjong is a game of skill, strategy and luck played with tiles. Typically played by four people, the game involves building a hand of matching sets.<\/p>\n
Interest in the game appears to be expanding nationwide. According to Yelp, searches for Mahjong clubs have increased more than 4,400% year over year across the country.<\/p>\n
More than 40% of young adults have played the game.<\/p>\n
Lee said perceptions of Mahjong have evolved as more younger players share their experiences online.<\/p>\n
“Some people think that, you know, oh, my mom plays it, my grandma plays it, is it actually a fun game? But they start seeing… these videos and pictures of younger folks trying it, and it seems like they have a lot of fun, so they also want to experience it at least once,” Lee said.<\/p>\n
As participation grows and new players discover the game, Mahjong continues to attract interest well beyond its traditional reputation, drawing younger adults to clubs and meetups across the country.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — In an era dominated by social media and endless scrolling, a growing number of young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[110557,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-260744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-110557","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}