Adolescence is a time when individuals are able to begin choosing how they spend their
time while discovering and developing their individual preferences and identities. U.S.
adolescents average about 6.5 to 8 hr of free time each day (Larson & Verma, 1999);
thus, how adolescents choose to spend their time is clearly a nontrivial part of their
development. To contribute to this area of knowledge, the current study analyzed whether
there were differences between how different groups of students with high academic
ability spent their time outside the classroom during the school year.