The Ecology of Adolescent Activity and Experience

  • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  • Reed Larson
  • Suzanne Prescott
Chapter
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Abstract

Twenty-five adolescents reported their daily activities and the quality of their experiences for a total of 753 times during a normal week, in response to random beeps transmitted by an electronic paging device. In this sample adolescents were found to spend most of their time either in conversation with peers or in watching television. Negative effects were prevalent in most activities involving socialization into adult roles. Television viewing appears to be an affectless state associated with deviant behavior and antisocial personality traits. The research suggests the importance of a systemic approach which studies persons’ activities and experiences in an ecological context. The experiential sampling method described in this chapter provides a tool for collecting such systemic data.

Keywords

Television Viewing Secondary Activity Experiential Sampling Method Adult Role Adolescent Activity 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the many persons who helped collect the data, especially Ms. Patricia Marott and her colleagues in H.D. 362. The research reported herein was partially funded through PHS Grant 5-R01 MH-22883-03.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
    • 1
  • Reed Larson
    • 2
  • Suzanne Prescott
    • 3
  1. 1.Claremont Graduate UniversityClaremontUSA
  2. 2.University of ChicagoChicagoUSA
  3. 3.College of Human Learning and DevelopmentGovernors State UniversityUniversity ParkUSA

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