‘Doing Nothing’ As Luxury? Young People’s Leisure Practice and Their Perception of Having Time to Do Nothing

Youth is widely understood as kind of a ‘moratorium’, without the duties adults have. Youth policy debates are about a youth phase, which is speeding up and seems denser than it used to be. Social developments contribute to the fact that young people have less free time. Open spaces, i.e. spaces that have not already been predefined and planned by adults, are particularly important in this phase of life to be able to make own experiences without adult supervision. Therefore, ‘doing nothing’ can be understood as such a leisure activity where young people can hang around without heteronomy. Youth policy has therefore long called for the creation of free spaces for young people - free spaces without self-purpose, external control and pressure to perform. The restrictions imposed by the COVID pandemic in recent years clearly stood in the way of this. Meeting up with friends or spending their free time as usual, was no longer possible. ’Doing nothing’ was more negatively labelled again. But also beyond of crises such as the pandemic, it seems that not everybody can ‘afford’ times of ‘doing nothing’ (e.g. financially deprived young people).

With regard to this debate, the aim of this paper is to examine which young people engage in this leisure activity more often than others and how strong they perceive to have times of doing nothing. For this purpose, the survey ‘Growing up in Germany - AID:A’ of the German Youth Institute (DJI) provides longitudinal data about the frequency of ‘doing nothing’ and the subjective feeling of being able to afford times of doing nothing. It includes information about adolescents and young adults (aged 12 to 32 years) before, during and after the COVID pandemic (in 2019, 2021, 2023). The analyses will differentiate between aspects of the life situation and socio-demographic characteristics.