Children, Youth and Time: Volume 30

The year 2020 brought a series of previously unknown experiences, events, and life situations to the world. Fear of unknown, uncertainty, unpredictability, and dramatic changes have had a strong impact on all strata and segments of society. We assume that global happenings of the last decade, climate change, pandemic followed by its related strict restrictions mean a determining event for youngsters which fundamentally shapes their lifestyle, future prospects, problem perception, and their generational characteristics as well. In our study, we examine the real-life situation of students at the University of Szeged from numerous aspects, with particular regard to the possible generation-transforming role of climate and quarantine situation, and we also scrutinize to what extent our previous estimations can be verified with data. The online data collection was carried out in the spring of 2021, the sample contains 1195 members. As the result of the data analysis, we indicated that the coronavirus epidemic does not play a leading role in the problem perception of the students, however, their responses about their self-characterization testify on increased perception of crisis phenomena. Although public life and public discourse have been thematized by the coronavirus epidemic since spring 2020, incompetence of politicians and global environmental change are the most serious problems for the students. In the basic dimensions of youth vulnerability namely in the field of education, leisure, and finance, the satisfaction of the students are the lowest. As a result of the restrictive measures, the online activity of the students has further strengthened; instead of silence and apolitical behavior, the students are characterized by a strong public–political interest, increased sensitivity to global problems in the third wave of the pandemic.

Children and young people’s time is generally structured by adults’ ideas and interests, be it in the family (sleeping or eating times), in the social world (time of school) or in the cultural realm (holidays and festivities). Children’s autonomy of how they spend their time is reduced to certain spaces, which again are assigned to them by adults. For the past two decades, digital media has entered many people’s – adults as well as children’s and young people’s – everyday life.

With the omnipresent and growing use of digital media by young people – fueled even more by mobile devices – grows a discourse around possible (negative) effects and supposedly necessary pedagogical monitoring and restrictions of their digital media time.

These discussions regarding negative effects on well-being and school performance include formal recommendations for limiting the quantity of time spent online. Hereby, mainly the digital time outside school is addressed and potentially problematized. Despite numerous studies on the effects of digital media time on different aspects of young people’s lives there is little research asking for children’s and young people’s perspectives on digital media use and time.

This study uses questionnaires (509) and qualitative interviews (15) to explore young people’s perspectives in terms of meaning, quality and quantity of the time spent with digital media. The participants were youth aged 12–20 from northern Germany. Using qualitative content analysis, findings point to a necessary differentiation between the purpose of usage, respective effects and evaluations.

Accordingly, being online can be an act (a) of self-actualization including positive effects creating great meaning for well-being, identity and appropriation of the digital world for their own future, (b) a waste of time when, for example, using social media or gaming to pass the time including a feeling that time is accelerated and rushing, personal regrets and references to loss of control and the need for self-control, and (c) a pragmatic naturalization of the digital as one part of life for various individual or social purposes and developments.

The article discusses young people’s evaluations and perspectives addressing the possibly artificial adult differentiation of analog and digital time or activities as well as adults’ presumptions about young people’s digital time and the strive for control resulting from these. Additionally, insights from the circumstances of the COVID-19 lockdown are included in gaining knowledge about what is actually important and rewarding when young people spend time digitally. The chapter aims at an intergenerational understanding of the significance of digital media in young people’s lives questioning alarmist scenarios of a generation that is lost in the digital world.

In Japan, the first state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic was declared from April to May 2020, and it was recommended that people stay home. In this study, parents were asked (using an internet questionnaire) how their children spend time at home compared to their usual activities during this period. We conducted a cluster analysis of change patterns of indoor activities among preschool children aged three to six years (n = 1.036). The cluster analysis examined whether watching videos, playing video games, engaging in active play, taking part in art activities, and joint reading of books/picture books increased or decreased compared to normal times. Two-step cluster analysis suggested five subgroups: (1) all indoor activities were almost the same as usual, (2) video viewing and art activities increased, and active play decreased, (3) video viewing, art activities, and active play increased, (4) video viewing, computer games, art activities increased, and active play declined, and (5) video viewing and computer games increased, and all other activities decreased. Of these subgroups, it is considered that particular attention should be paid to the developmental risks of Clusters 4 and 5, who might have spent more time doing digital activities and taken part in fewer interactive activities. In addition, it was indicated that these patterns were related to parental mental health and demographic characteristics. It remains to examine the support in such case considering the possibility that less participation in interactive activities and worse mental health of parents may have negative effects on development of children.

The family time is being an important element in assisting to empower the mutual feeling in connecting both love and compassion among the family members. The copying initiative to spend the quality time with family is supposed to embed the feeling of security, the family values with confidence, in order to strengthen the social intelligence. However, due to the pandemic age with its outstanding challenges on being less socially connected, the more affection as the real impact toward the reduction on social interaction requires the attempts to restore the process with the sufficient link between emotional and social intelligence. The aim of this chapter attempts to examine the family quality time maintenance for children’s social intelligence in order to fully comprehend the strategic way of particular issue identification in affecting the children, by the suggested proper solution amidst the pandemic age. The empirical data from the qualitative interview among 12 public educators were employed by exploring their beliefs and practices in maintaining the family time quality for their children social intelligence support. The finding of this chapter reveals that there are three aspects of maintaining the family time for children’s social intelligence support, consisting of the technical skills to improve the family relationships, the communication on the feelings to care for being close relationships and emotional intimacy to advance the family contact in broadening the comfortable spend of time with emotional integrity and openness. The value of this chapter is to give an insightful value on the knowledge enrichment about the strategic maintenance of family time quality for children’s social intelligence. Offering the understandable suggestion together with an effective method to bring the family time into being closer is supposed to lead to the emotional intelligence among the peer-family members, mainly parent–children relationship amidst the pandemic age.

The following chapter analyses the ways in which unequal patterns of time develop effectiveness in childhood and adolescence. Central is the focus of the taken-for-granted experiences in the phase of growing up, the developing ways of life and value attitudes. In this context, questions arise about the extent to which children and adolescents help to shape the time patterns that are relevant to them and how an “equitable distribution” of “temporal resources” could be promoted.

Children’s time and how they spend it has been the focus of both scholarly and political interest. This is evident in the various ways in which society models children’s time use. This study examines Ghanaian children’s fantasy about how they would wish to spend their time. Forty-seven narrative essays written by children between ages 10 and 13 about their imagined ideal childhood is the data for the study. Documentary method was used to analyze the data with the focus on making the implicit meaning explicit. It was observed that children fantasize about spending a lot of time on leisure activities, however, structured social time constraints on children’s time like schooling and learning forms a very small part of their fantasy. In addition, they fantasize about lots of changes to school as an education institution and learning as a compulsory activity in childhood. It is argued that the children’s aversion to schooling and learning is a system critique and not a dislike to acquiring knowledge.