Using leisure to find meaning: Perspectives from youth in Stockholm

This study explores how young people aged 16-19 in Stockholm engage with leisure as a socially embedded and emotionally meaningful practice. Drawing on qualitative data, it examines how youth use their leisure time in relation to institutional structures, cultural expectations, and subjective well-being. Although often regarded as a domain of freedom and relaxation, the findings show that leisure is frequently shaped by time constraints, academic demands, and limited access to inclusive environments, factors that can render it fragmented and constrained. At times, leisure becomes a source of pressure, influenced by dominant narratives of productivity, self-improvement, and future orientation. Nonetheless, it retains emotional significance, offering young people opportunities to manage stress, explore identity, and foster social connection. Forms of engagement, such as creative expression, informal socializing, and physical movement, provided moments of joy, rest, and reflection. These experiences were defined less by the specific activity than by the emotional, relational, and imaginative possibilities they enabled. In this way, leisure plays a critical role in supporting youth mental health, offering not only opportunities for recovery but also a context for ethical interaction, long-term commitment, and everyday forms of play. By situating leisure within broader socio-cultural and economic frameworks and emphasizing its existential and exploratory dimensions, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of its complex role in young people's lives. Leisure is not simply free time, but a vital arena for meaning-making, fostering connection, and imagining alternative futures in an increasingly performance-oriented society.