Moving beyond individual choice of (non-)participation: The significance of social relations

Health authorities recommend physical activity of moderate-to-high intensity for 60 minutes daily but many adolescents do not follow this advice. To address this issue, health promotion strategies guided by the Health Belief Model, for example, focus on stimulating the individual to change behaviour, leaving contextual and social conditions unaddressed. These individual-focused approaches direct the responsibility for changing behaviour to the adolescent. If the change does not occur, the individual adolescent may feel blamed and, therefore, guilty for not being able to solve the problem themselves. The aim of this chapter is to move beyond such thinking about adolescents’ non-participation in sport and leisure time physical activity as a personal trouble and to broaden our understanding by examining such non-participation as a social issue. To do so, this chapter suggests that we relate adolescents’ participation in sport and physical activity with their specific contextual and social conditions. I point especially to the significance of social support in order to better understand the circumstances that influence individuals’ opportunities to take part in physical activities.