The Youth Play Project: Leisure and Mental Health
In the ongoing research project Youth Play, we explore the intersection of youth mental health and leisure. This investigative effort aims to center youth and their real-life conditions through the exploration of leisure time. The initiative seeks to illuminate the impact of meaningful leisure on youth mental health while identifying barriers that hinder access to meaningful free time.
The Youth Play project fills a gap in mental health research by turning to a qualitative exploration of the leisure context and experience. We look at the everyday, the mundane, the joy, the fun, the life satisfaction, the identity formation, and the search for free time. For many young people leisure must be thoughtfully organized and is often deprioritized in daily routines over homework and other duties. The access to suitable recreational spaces and activities due to structural and logistical constraints is also considered.
In Youth Play, we explore how leisure can be used to find meaning, we look at the communal nature of leisure through shared experiences and turn an eye to the pockets of downtime that youth carve out in what is actually quite busy free time. Older adolescents progressively value unstructured leisure activities and peer-relationships, hanging out, and spending time out of the home. We consider the extended social world of extracurricular relations and spaces as an arena within which different experiences are made possible.
At the core of the Youth Play project lies a commitment to amplifying the voices and experiences of young people. By prioritizing their perspectives, the initiative seeks to develop future research and interventions that resonate with the unique circumstances and challenges faced by today's youth. The project's initial phase involved group interviews with 31 students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in four high schools across the Stockholm region. Preliminary results were shared with the participating students and schools. A scientific paper is currently being finalized and will soon be sent out for publication.