Socially Patterned Strategic Complementarity between Offline Leisure Activities and Internet Practices among Young People

Abstract

While research exists regarding the internet’s influence on traditional forms of youth leisure, research based on a comprehensive set of leisure indicators is scattered. We explore how a set of young peoples’ in-person leisure activities are complemented by their internet practices, using a canonical correlation framework to estimate the relationship between leisure activities and internet practices. We also measure how internet practices vary depending on the social properties of young people. We find that a strategic complementarity exists between certain offline leisure activities and specific online internet practices, in particular, that in-person social leisure is complemented by social interaction over the internet, that in-person cultural leisure is complemented by online information-seeking and asynchronous communication practices, and that in-home gaming is complemented by software and associated downloads. This strategic complementarity, furthermore, is also socially patterned, primarily by gender.