Young people today have little leisure time due to academic pressures from school and parents. They are focused heavily on their studies with long school days, homework, private tutoring, and high competition among classmates. As a result, students have increased stress, anxiety, and health issues from lack of balance and relaxation in their lives. Proper education systems are needed that encourage learning without extreme pressure and allow for leisure activities important for well-being.

1. Name: Peerun Bibi Ameerah
Id: 0313939
Module: English 1
Session: April 2013
In some countries young people have little leisure time and are under a lot of pressure
to work hard in their studies.What do you think are the causes and effects of this
condition? Plan your response, and then write a cause and effect essay.
Young people, little leisure time
The youngsters of today’s generation are often taken away from their leisure time
in order to achieve higher in their academic performance. A person needs to take time
away from his daily usual activities and place such as school, workplace, and
housework and so on. In consequence, the human mind and body can find peace by
taking some leisure time which helps to relax, a sense of self and de-stressed. Leisure
time activities include games, sports, reading, cultural events, entertainment and
community service. Leisure activities are very important as it bring a flow of positive

2. energy and help to refresh the mind. Unfortunately, nowadays young people do not
enjoy as much as needed their leisure time. They tend to focus more on their academic
obligations and neglect their supposed-to-be leisure time. Study pressure is inflected on
students by their parents or educational body. A proper education system is required for
students to aim higher by avoiding severe competition. Today’s students are faces with
academics and extracurricular demands, private tuition and health problems.
School-age children feel stressed about academic and extracurricular demands,
according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Some
education system requires a student to attend school for eight hours. Inside the walls of
an educational institution, students face a great amount of pressure in disguise. They
have to be constantly focused on classes and worry about their grades. The level of
competition is very high which make young people to always want to reach perfection
before their fellow classmates. In order to do so, students are continuously working hard
at school but also after those eight hours spent at school they head home for more
workload. As soon as they reach home, they have to complete their homework, work on
assignment and memorize notes. By the time they finish all of these it is already bed
time and the following day will be alike. The high competitions that exist among
youngsters in the academic world make them forget that they should relax a while.
Today’s youngsters believe that, to have a good and comfortable life in the future, they
need to always try harder and sometime beyond their own limit. The free time that they
could have spent to watch a movie, do sports or their favorite past time, is on the
contrary spent on studying.

3. During the past few years, another factor that causes young people to spend less
time on leisure activities is private tuition. For many students, school is a constant
struggle to deal with too many issues simultaneously. Being surrounded by top
achievers and also being pressurized by parents to score A’s, some students might lose
their self confidence of whether to be able to meet the criteria of a successful person. In
order to make their parents proud, youngsters attend private tuition after school hours
and even on weekends instead of having some quality time by taking a break from
academic matters. Moreover, the amount of homework and project work is doubled. The
educational curriculum usually comprises of extracurricular activities such as sports
games, such as football, volleyball and music classes. But unfortunately even for such
activities students are assessed and are expected to do their best instead of having fun
and relaxing. For example, the winning team in a volleyball match will be rewarded by
higher marks than the other team. A game which could have been a friendly match is
viewed as a competition. Those who did not play well will tend to try harder and harder
to improve their skills but not positively for their own passion. It is mostly to be better
than others in a competitive way.
A lack of leisure time and activities in a young person’s life may result in a
negative manner.Less parent interaction and imbalanced way of living, having little or
no time for leisure activities, are also said to be the culprits for mental disorders (Times
Online Sdn. Bhd., 2012). Always concentrating on studies may develop stress which
can be very detrimental to a student health. A young person is not expected to have a
high level of stress. Some of the health problems related to lack of leisure time are loss
of appetite, emotional outburst, difficulty sleeping, isolation and withdrawal, and low

4. confidence level.Many students trying to work hard actually end up being de-motivated
and their level of anxiety is also very high. In addition, stressful events such as
examination failure may trigger the depressive factor of a person.
We are living in a materialistic era and we are more likely to forget or neglect our
leisure time. Spending at least one hour in doing something we like may actually reduce
the amount of stress. An organized plan of work including small break to relax is
essential especially we want to make progress in life. Young people should balance
their study time and leisure time for a healthy living. Leisure activities can contribute in
the physical and intellectual potential development of a person.

5. References
Drea C., (2010). Causes Of Stress in Teenager. Retrieved from
http://www.livestrong.com/article/134259-causes-stress-teenagers/
Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (1995). Leisure-time activities
WPAY. Retrieved from
http://social.un.org/index/Youth/WorldProgrammeofActionforYouth/Leisure
timeactivities/LeisuretimeactivitiesWPAY.aspx
eCampusTours. (2012). Dealing with school pressures. Retrieved from
http://www.ecampustours.com/campuslife/studyhabitsandtimemanagemen
t/dealingwithschoolpressure#.UadBGECLCSo
Sargunjot. K. (2013). Academic Pressure. Retrieved from
http://www.pamf.org/teen/life/stress/academicpressure.html
Amy R., Denise M. Anderson. The Park and Recreation Professional’s
Handbook. Retrieved
fromhttp://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/definitions-of-
leisure-play-and-recreation