It doesn't matter if I feel obliged as long as I enjoy it: The associations between organized leisure‐time activities and adolescents' mental health and wellbeing

Introduction: There is a consensus that adolescents' participation in organized leisure‐time activities (OLTAs) is pro‐developmental and beneficial for youth mental health. While enjoyment in OLTA is commonly regarded as positive, the role of obligation in the context of adolescents' OLTA has been scarcely researched. The present study investigated how these theoretically contradictory experiences (enjoyment and/or obligation) in OLTA participation relate to adolescents' wellbeing and incidence of psychological complaints accounting for their possible co‐occurrence. Methods: A nationally representative sample of 14,128 eleven–fifteen‐year‐old adolescents (49.7% girls) drawn from the Czech 2021/2022 Health Behaviour in School‐aged Children cross‐sectional study was used. A series of multivariate regression analyses assessed how perceptions of obligation and enjoyment in OLTA related to wellbeing and occurrence of psychological complaints. A person‐centered approach derived groups of respondents on the basis of their perceptions of obligation and enjoyment. Results: Regression analyses, controlled for sociodemographic and family environment factors, and dimensions of OLTA participation, indicated that adolescents enjoying their OLTA displayed more favourable mental wellbeing reports. In contrast, perceptions of obligation were only weakly associated with more frequent psychological complaints and not at all with wellbeing, unless adolescents also reported the lack of enjoyment. Conclusions: Enjoyment in OLTA plays a pivotal role in the association between OLTA participation and mental health, whereas the role of obligation is far less pronounced. In fact, if adolescents do not enjoy their participation, but feel obliged to participate, their self‐assessed mental wellbeing is comparable to their peers not participating in OLTA at all.