How an adolescent spends their time is a reflection of the investments and decisions made by their family and themselves, influenced by their environment. Therefore, analysing their time use patterns demonstrates inequalities, such as by socio-economic status and gender. In addition, variations in time use may be linked to adolescents’ development, given that adolescence is a crucial life stage where adolescents learn how to conceptualise their identities in adult social contexts.

In this talk, I discuss my empirical work which examines adolescents’ time diaries in a diverse set of societies, and how daily activities are related to adolescents’ mental wellbeing. I use time diary information, which provides granular detail of the full time budget in 24 hours, minimises recall bias, and is a less ‘prescriptive’ way in our narration of adolescent time use. I show that contexts matter – such as where teenage paid and unpaid work is performed – and share preliminary work on the variations in adolescents’ time use patterns across East Asian and Western societies.

Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm.

Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions or to receive the Microsoft Teams link.