The authors review studies on time use of children and adolescents around the world and discuss developmental implications of population differences. Industrialization and schooling are linked to dramatic declines in time spent on household and wage labor. This labor is often unchallenging, sometimes hazardous; developmental benefits often do not increase above a limited number of hours; hence, reduction in these activities opens time for activities that may be more developmentally beneficial. Adolescents in East Asian postindustrial societies spend this freed-up time in schoolwork, a use associated with lower intrinsic motivation but high achievement and economic productivity. Adolescents in North America spend more time in leisure, associated with greater self-direction but of an uncertain relation to development. Age, gender, and socioeconomic differences in activities and with whom time is spent are also considered.

Like adolescents in East Asia, Indian middle-class adolescents face a highly competitive examination system. This study examines the in uence of school demands on the daily time use and subjective states of Indian young people. One hundred urban, middle-class, 8th-grade students carried alarm watches for 1 week and provided 476 4 reports on their activities and subjective states at random times, following the procedures of the Experience Sampling Method. These adolescents were found to spend one third of their waking time in school-related activities, with girls spending more time than boys. Schoolwork generated negative subjective states as re ected in low affect state, below-average activation levels, lower feeling of choice, and higher social anxiety. T hese negative states were most frequent during homework. The trade-off faced by Indian adolescents were evident in the ndings that those who spent more time doing homework experienced lower average emotional states and more internalising problems, while those who spent more time in leisure experienced more favourable states but also reported higher academic anxiety and lower scholastic achievement.

Trends across nations suggest that adulthood in the future will require greater social versatility, including abilities to function in relationships that are less scripted by community norms and that bridge multiple social worlds. This article assesses whether current changes in adolescents' interpersonal experience are likely to give them the social resources and competencies they will need. Changes in families are making them smaller, more diverse in social capital, and more responsive to adolescents. Changes in adolescents' nonfamily experience include more time in institutional settings; more involvement with peers; and more cycles of developing (and ending) relationships with a heterogeneous set of adults, friends, and, for many, romantic partners. The analysis suggests that these changes will provide many youth with greater opportunities to develop the more versatile interpersonal resources required in the future, but that many adolescents will have restricted opportunities to acquire these resources.Requests for reprints should be sent to Reed Larson,

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The sudden switch to distance education to contain the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered adolescents’ lives around the globe. The present research aims to identify psychological characteristics that relate to adolescents’ well-being in terms of positive emotion and intrinsic learning motivation, and key characteristics of their learning behavior in a situation of unplanned, involuntary distance education. Following Self-Determination Theory, experienced competence, autonomy, and relatedness were assumed to relate to active learning behavior (i.e., engagement and persistence), and negatively relate to passive learning behavior (i.e., procrastination), mediated via positive emotion and intrinsic learning motivation. Data were collected via online questionnaires in altogether eight countries from Europe, Asia, and North America (N = 25,305) and comparable results across countries were expected. Experienced competence was consistently found to relate to positive emotion and intrinsic learning motivation, and, in turn, active learning behavior in terms of engagement and persistence. The study results further highlight the role of perceived relatedness for positive emotion. The high proportions of explained variance speak in favor of taking these central results into account when designing distance education in times of COVID-19.