Why Is Participation In Organized After School Activities

According to the articles, there is increasing knowledge how young people use their time outside of school has consequences for their development. This knowledge indicates that organized activities, extracurricular activities, after-school programs, and youth organizations have increased distinctly. The intensity of research on controlled activities has revealed positive consequences of participation for academic, educational, social, civic, and physical development. This information, along with the safety and supervision provided by structured activities for youth with working parents, has stimulated programs at the local, state and Federal levels to expand opportunities for participation. There are various doubts that exist in participating

The neighborhood is one background where youth can potentially find significant ways to actively participate in methods that affect their development. Nevertheless, neighborhood effects are indirect and operate through more proximal processes that occur at the levels of the individual and family. For instance, predominantly for younger adolescents, access to neighborhood resources may be negotiated by parents or by adolescents’ own ability to self-regulate. While all youth stand to benefit from supportive circumstances and ecologies, the strategies for promoting these assets may vary as a function of the individual’s social location and internal resources (Urban, Bizan, & Lerner,

In the early adolescence youth are beginning to make their own decisions about how to spend their after school time, and these choices can have important suggestions for their future development path. Involvement in supervised and organized activities during the after school hours is associated with positive outcomes, while participation in unsupervised and/or unstructured environments is elated to less favorable adjustment. As middle school youth begin to individualize from parents, they seek emotional support from caring non-familial adults. Participating in high quality organized activities affords youth the opportunity to form supportive and caring relationships with adults in the wider community who can provide them with social capital. Establishing relationships with peers and feelings connected is increasingly important during this period. Extracurricular activities provide a unique environment for developing relationships with diverse peers and belonging to a group. Early adolescence is a time when youth begin to engage in identity exploration. Evidence from qualitative studies illustrates the potential benefits of organized activities to facilitate identity development and personal exploration. Since extracurricular activities are