Modern adolescents’ leisure activities

Abstract

This article reports on a study of how Icelandic adolescents experience their own competence through participation in leisure activities, and how characteristics of late modernity are involved in the competence they describe.The participants are from two schools: one in a city, the other in a village.Through qualitative analysis of 32 interviews, four categories of competence are defined: (a) doing/knowing - practical competence, (b) being - personal/emotional competence, (c) being together - social competence, and (d) reflecting - cognitive/social competence.These categories are defined in a twodimensional model.Three concepts - reflexivity, individualization and ‘makeability’- are used for depicting how characteristics of late modernity are involved in the adolescents’ experienced competence. The social situations of those in the city group seem to provide new challenges which enhance special types of competence: being flexible, selfreflectionsand using conflicts in a creative way, which suggests an interaction between informal learning and changed social situations connected to leisure activities in modern urban societies.