Flow, leisure, and positive youth development

Abstract

Leisure has been associated with several developmental opportunities that foster adolescents’ optimal growth. Considering leisure as a context, activity or experience, researchers have focused on its role in the study of flow experience. Both leisure and flow experiences, and the way they interrelate, emerge as relevant to promoting positive youth development, daily and along life trajectories. This chapter aims to present and analyze conceptual and empirical evidence about the connection between positive youth development, leisure, and flow experience. Among the empirical evidence, we highlight studies from our Portuguese research team, the Research Group on Optimal Functioning - GIFOp, aimed at studying adolescents’ optimal functioning. Specifically, we illustrate results according to different aims and methodologies. In this sense, we discuss adolescents’ daily life perceptions of activities and quality of experiences, and future life goals, measured by retrospective self-report questionnaires; and flow, optimal experience and motivational aspects of subjective experience, by real-time measures, specifically the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). The conclusion sheds light on the importance of a psycho-social-ecological approach when studying adolescents’ flow and leisure experiences and how these enhance positive youth development. Future research directions will consider the importance of merging school and leisure contexts, highlighting the role of leisure structured activities to promote flow and optimal experiences, when considered as different components of subjective experience. In addition, the use of different methodologies based on both retrospective and realtime measures, are addressed as being equally important and relevant to continue the main conceptual discussion around flow and optimal experiences in adolescence.