Research Findings: Age - Youth: Role of leisure activities on health Summary Papers

Social and health consequences of changing leisure patterns in youths

Until the 1990s leisure activity among young females was mainly home-based and relatively passive compared to active street-based play of young males.  Over the course of the 1990s however, there was increasing public visibility, reduced restrictions on activities and increases in health-risk behaviours among females, and suggestions that young males were now spending more time at home. 

This study compared information from the 1970s cohort of the Twenty-07 Study when they were 15, with a second cohort of 15 year olds in the same geographical area in 1999 to examine changes in patterns of leisure activity, uses of public spaces and substance use over this time period. 

We found that male-female differences in street-based (previously more males) and conventional home-based (previously more females) leisure have disappeared over time.  Watching screen sports and playing computer games has increased among males.  Moreover, levels of drinking, smoking and experiences of illicit drugs among females have overtaken those of males.  Changing patterns of substance use between males and females can be accounted for in part by changes in leisure activities and the lifting of constraints on young women’s lifestyles.  In the space of little more than a decade, these significant changes are important markers in influencing and developing future social and health policy.

Sweeting, H. and P. West (2003). "Young people's leisure and risk-taking behaviours: changes in gender patterning in the West of Scotland during the 1990s." Journal of Youth Studies 6 (4): 391-412.
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