Reducing adolescent substance use is important in South Africa, a developing nation with increasing adolescent substance use, lack of leisure/recreation opportunities, and high rates of adolescent discretionary time. Previous research suggests leisure boredom and adolescent substance use co-occur in this setting. Using longitudinal data from 2,580 South African adolescents as they progressed from the 8th to 11th grade, the current study disentangles the associations of trait and state leisure boredom with substance use, and examines how ability to restructure boring situations moderates those associations. On average, individuals with higher trait boredom used more substances, and on occasions when state boredom was high, the prototypical adolescent used more substances. Although restructuring did not moderate these associations, greater ability was associated with lower substance use independent of leisure boredom. Findings illustrated the importance of considering how trait and state aspects of leisure may contribute to adolescents’ risk behavior and addressed through preventive intervention.

Education is one of the strongest predictors of health worldwide. In South Africa, school dropout is a crisis where by Grade 12, only 52% of the age appropriate population remain enrolled. Survival analysis was used to identify the risk of dropping out of secondary school for male and female adolescents and examine the influence of substance use and leisure experience predictors while controlling for demographic and known predictors using secondary, longitudinal data. Results indicated being male, not living with one’s mother, smoking cigarettes in the past month, and lower levels of leisure-related intrinsic motivation significantly predicted dropout. Results support comprehensive prevention programmes that target risk behaviour and leisure.

There has been very little research investigating leisure boredom and risk behaviour among adolescents in South Africa. A systematic review of literature was conducted to synthesise current knowledge within the field of leisure boredom and risk behaviour among adolescents. An online and a hand search for relevant articles were conducted using keywords. This resulted in the retrieval of 25 articles that met the inclusion criteria. It was evident that the experience of leisure boredom is influenced by a variety of different factors, not least of which is the environment or context within which adolescents are situated. A key finding was how few studies have focussed on leisure boredom and risk behaviour in adolescents, particularly in the developing world. Also, gaps in the knowledge basis were identified, thus providing direction for future research. The review focuses attention on leisure boredom as a factor contributing to risk behaviour in adolescents. Expanding knowledge in this area is useful for indi...

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of an international collaborative effort that aims to reduce risky behavior (e.g., substance use, risky sexual behavior) that leads to outcomes such as HIV/AIDs, pregnancy, and addictions among a sample of South African youth. Because many of these risky behaviors occur in free time, a major part of the effort was leisure education to promote positive use of free time. The program described has been pilot tested and is currently underway as a larger-scale, randomized trial in the Province of the Western Cape in South Africa. This paper describes the conceptualization and revision of the HealthWise curriculum, working with the Western Cape Education Department, and the on-going randomized trial.