Temporal trends in after-school activities among students from 2019 to 2022

Abstract

Background

Students’ participation in after-school activities changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it remains unclear whether these changes were primarily attributable to the pandemic itself or to age-related developmental trends. This study aims to examine how activity patterns shifted during the pandemic and distinguish temporal trends related to the pandemic from normal developmental changes.

Methods

This repeated-measure cross-sectional study included 112,358 participants contributed 229,700 observations in Australia. Students who were in grades 4 to 9 between 2019 and 2022 were included. Weekly frequency of eleven activities were measured, and categorized as none, moderate, or high. Ordinal logistic regression models were used to examine the temporal trend of after-school activity participation.

Results

Clear temporal trends were observed across the four years: participation in social media and e-games increased over the four years, with the greatest rise in social media. Conversely, participation in sports, reading, study, friends, and clubs declined, while TV, arts, chores remained stable. These temporal trends were largely consistent across grade levels, indicating that the changes reflect pandemic-related shifts at the population level rather than age-related developmental effects. An exception was Grade 7, the first year of secondary school, which exhibited the greatest increase in social media use, and largest declines in music, arts, and reading compared to other grades.

Discussion

The pandemic was associated with substantial shifts in students’ activity participation, with adverse temporal trends persisting after lockdown ended. Targeted interventions are needed to support students to re-engage in beneficial activities, with special attention to groups experiencing transitioning to secondary school.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-026-26423-3.

Introduction

In Australia, primary and secondary students typically have four to six hours of after-school time each day, representing a substantial portion of their daily routine. The ways in which students spend this time are critical for their overall development. Engaging in activities that are commonly considered beneficial, such as organized sports, is linked to improved academic performance, and better mental health [9, 10]. Conversely, when after-school time is dominated by screen-based activities, such as social media use or television viewing, there may be more negative developmental consequences [36, 40].

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, studies indicated that students spent over 40–60% of their after-school time engaged in sedentary activities [2, 24]. During the pandemic, social distancing measures disrupted most organized after-school programs, and online forms of socialisation between peers became the norm [1]. As a result, the pandemic had an impact on the types of activities that students engage in. Recent estimates show that participation rates in after-school activities, sports, and outdoor play declined significantly during the pandemic, while time spent on screen-based activities increased markedly [18, 26, 30, 31]. However, the studies exploring pandemic and post-pandemic activity participation typically reflect whole-day activity patterns, including school-based activities, which tend to be more structured and uniform across students. In contrast, after-school hours offer greater autonomy and choice, and are more strongly shaped by family, social, and environmental factors, making them a more sensitive indicator of behavioural change. How after-school activities changed during the pandemic, and whether temporal trends (defined as shifts in the activity patterns of children of the same age across different time periods, rather than changes as children get older) have persisted, alleviated, or returned to pre-pandemic levels remains unknown.

Furthermore, age is likely to influence how an external disruption such as the pandemic impacts activity participation. Some studies suggest older students were less affected than younger ones [41, 44], as they are typically more independent in finding alternative activities or staying connected with peers [19, 35]. However, it remains unclear which age group has been most affected in the context of after-school activity participation.

Currently, most existing studies on the pandemic’s impact on activity participation have utilized longitudinal trajectory analysis designs, tracking the same group of participants over multiple time points (e.g., [41]). While such studies provide valuable insights into within-person changes over time, they may not capture broader temporal trends or population-level trends, particularly if the sample is not representative or if patterns differ across cohorts. In addition, longitudinal studies cannot distinguish between age-related effects and pandemic-related effects. For example, participation in organised sport was negatively impacted during the pandemic, but also tends to decline across adolescence. From a public health perspective, failing to distinguish these effects may lead to misattribution of normative developmental changes to pandemic disruptions. Making this distinction is essential for informing whether observed changes require short-term recovery policies or longer-term, age-appropriate interventions.

A repeated-measure cross-sectional study design can overcome this limitation by detecting broad, population-level shifts in behaviour [47]. Data are collected from the same target population at different time points, avoiding age-related confounding effects and providing insights that are crucial for designing timely interventions [47]. This research design can be used to inform public policy and evaluate the impact of large-scale events such as the pandemic.

This study utilized a repeated-measure cross-sectional design to provide a comprehensive picture on the temporal trends in over 112,000 Australian students’ after-school activity participation from 2019 to 2022 (referred to Table S1). The first aim was to describe overall temporal trends in after-school activity participation from 2019 to 2022. The second aim was to explore the impact of age (school grade) on trends in after-school activity participation across time.

Methods

Study design & participants

The Well-being and Engagement Collection (WEC) is a state-wide census designed to collect data on non-academic factors that are pertinent to the well-being of students in Grades 4 to 12 in the Australian state of South Australia. It was derived from the Canadian Middle Years Development Instrument, which has been adapted for use in Australia [21]. The census is conducted by the South Australian Department for Education annually in the second school term. All schools in South Australia are invited to participate. In 2020, the WEC was initially scheduled for Term 2 but was suspended due to COVID-19 pandemic, yielding only limited data from a small number of schools. The survey ran again to collect the remaining data in Term 3 while students were attending school in person, thereby avoiding the lockdown and home-schooling period. This project received an ethics exemption from the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of South Australia (application #202625). In the present study, we analysed WEC data collected between 2019 and 2022 to examine temporal trends in after-school activity participation using a repeated cross-sectional design. Participants were students who were in Grades 4 to 9 (corresponding to ages 9–15) between 2019 and 2022. Within each grade, students sampled in different survey years constitute independent cross-sectional samples. The results of this study were reported in accordance with the STROBE guidelines [46].

After-school activity frequency measures

Eleven after-school activities were assessed in the WEC. These included Social media use (Social media), Watching TV (TV), Electronic games (E-games), Music lessons (Music), Arts, Organized sports (Sport), Reading for fun (Reading), Homework/Tutor (Study), Chores, Hang out with friends (Friends), and Participation in young organizations (Clubs). Students were asked to report the number of days (never, once a week, twice a week, 3 times a week, 4 times a week, or 5 times a week) they participated in each activity during the after-school period. As the number of students reporting participation on 1–4 days per week was relatively small, estimates for these categories may be statistically unstable and offer limited epidemiological interpretability, thereby constraining their usefulness for informing policy or practice. Therefore, responses were collapsed and recoded into three categories: None (0 days/week), Moderate (1–4 days/week), and High (5 days/week). After-school activity questionnaire and distribution of after-school activities by the original six-level frequency categories are provided in Table S2 and Table S3 respectively.

Exposure

Time (calendar year) is considered as the categorical exposure variable to allow exploration of potential non-linear relationships. The pre-pandemic period refers to 2019. The pandemic period refers to 2020 and 2021 when the outbreak was at its most severe, schools underwent intermittent lockdowns, and youth faced the strictest social distancing measures. The post-pandemic period refers to 2022, after social distancing efforts had ceased.

Covariates

Sociodemographic information, including gender, main language spoken at home, region of residence, and highest parental education level, was obtained from school enrolment data reported by parents/caregivers prior to the start of each academic year, and administratively linked with WEC data. Student gender was reported by parents and categorized as male or female. The main language spoken at home was categorized as "English" or "Language Other Than English (LOTE)". The highest parental education level refers to the highest attainment by either parent and was classified into three categories: year 12 or less, (including no school qualifications, Year 9 or less, Year 10, Year 11, and Year 12), diploma (Certificate I to IV, Advanced Diploma/Diploma), and Bachelor degree or above. Region of residence was classified based on the postcode of main residence, using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Accessibility and Remoteness Index of Australia [4] into major city, inner and outer regional, and remote and very remote regional. The students’ residential postcodes were also used to obtain their community-level socio-economic status (SES) by linkage to the Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) [5]. The IRSD summarizes the economic and social conditions of a postal area by capturing relative disadvantage, with lower scores indicating greater disadvantage and higher scores indicating less disadvantage. IRSD scores were classified into deciles and recoded into three levels: 1–3 as Low SES, 4–6 as Medium SES, and 7–10 as High SES. These covariates were selected based on prior empirical evidence [3, 6, 11, 27, 42, 45, 50].

Statistical analysis

Ordinal logistic regression (OLR) models were employed with calendar year as the independent variable and after-school activity frequency as dependent variables. Students' gender, residential region, highest parental education level, main language spoken at home, and community SES were included as covariates. Potential clustering at the school level was accounted for by random intercepts. Sensitivity analyses repeating the analyses using the original six-level frequency categories. Adjusted predicted probabilities (95%CI) of frequency for each activity at each calendar year were reported and plotted to facilitate visual comparisons. Separate models were estimated for each school grade. This process was repeated within gender strata. All analyses were conducted in R statistical software (version 4.3.1) [39]. The analyses were conducted using complete-case data. The characteristics of excluded participants are reported in Table S1, and baseline characteristics were comparable between included and excluded participants.

Results

Characteristics of participants

A total of 112,358 participants contributing 229,700 observations were included in this study (Table S1). The participant flowchart was shown in Figure S1. On average, each individual student completed 2.0 annual surveys.

The sample exhibited an equal distribution of gender, with males and females each accounting for half of the participants. English was the most common language spoken at home (78.0%−81.7%). A majority (70.3%−72.4%) resided in major cities, while only a small proportion lived in remote or very remote areas (3.2%−3.6%). Approximately half of parents had a diploma-level education (41.0%−43.1%), and one-third had a bachelor's degree or higher qualification level (33.9%−38.0%).

Trends in after-school activity participation over time

Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 show the predicted probabilities (%) of after-school activity frequency across grades from 2019 to 2022. Model coefficients and predicted probabilities with 95% confidence intervals can be found in Table S4 and Table S5.

Fig. 1.

Adjusted prediction of after-school activity participation across grade (Social media, TV, E-games)

Fig. 2.

Adjusted prediction of after-school activity participation across grade (Reading, study, chores)

Fig. 3.

Adjusted prediction of after-school activity participation across grade (Music, arts, sport)

Fig. 4.

Adjusted prediction of after-school activity participation across grade (Friends, clubs)

Between 2019 and 2020, the probability of high (every day) social media use increased by 6–12% (from 13.5% in 2019 to 20.7% in 2020 for grade 4 s; and from 73.3% to 79.7% for grade 9 s)(Fig. 1). By 2022, the probability further increased, reaching 20.9% for grade 4 and 78.4% for grade 9. The reverse trend was observed for the probability of never using social media (from 58.1% in 2019 to 45.3% in 2020 for grade 4 s; and from 6.7% to 4.8% for grade 9 s). This figure slightly increased in 2021 but declined again in 2022 (45.0% for grade 4; 5.2% for grade 9).

The probability of playing E-games every day increased between 2019 and 2020 (from 29.5% in 2019 to 33.1% in 2020 for grade 4 s; and from 27.2% to 28.2% for grade 9 s) (Fig. 1). This probability kept rising in 2022 (reach34.4% for grade 4 and 31.9% for grade 9. The probability of never watching TV remained stable over the four years. However, the probability of watching TV every day fluctuated.

The probability of high participation in reading or study decreased from 2019 to 2021 (Reading: 12.1–41.1% in 2019 to 10.2–34.2% in 2021; Study: 15.2–32.0% in 2019 to 12.3–27.9% in 2021, Fig. 2), while the probability of never reading or study increased (Reading: 12.7–48.8% in 2019 to 16.4–53.7% in 2021; Study: 17.9–19.1% in 2019 to 21.0–23.2% in 2021) (Fig. 2). In the post-pandemic period, the probability of reading every day remained at lower levels, with no notable changes observed. The probability of study every day kept declining (9.8–26.7% in 2022). Participation in chores remained stable over the four years (Fig. 2).

The probability of high participation in music, arts, and sport remained stable during the pandemic (Fig. 3). In contrast, the probability of never participating in music, and sport increased during the pandemic (Music: 56.0–71.5% in 2019, 59.6–74.8% in 2021; Sports: 20.7–35.5% in 2019, 26.7–38.9% in 2021). The figures continued to increase in 2022. Participation in arts remained stable over the four years, with minimal visual changes observed (Fig. 3).

The probability of hanging out with friends every day showed a sustained decline through 2021, before rebounding in 2022 (28.0–13.3% in 2021, 27.9–15.0% in 2022) (Fig. 4). The probability of participation in clubs everyday remained stable over the four years. In contrast, the probability of never participating in clubs increased in 2020, and remained at 2020 levels in 2021 and 2022 (Fig. 4).

Grade-level differences in after-school activity

Over time, trends in after-school activity participation were consistent across different ages (represented by school grades), as indicated by relatively parallel lines in each sub-plot of Figs. 1, 2, 3 and 4. However, the spacings between these lines differed substantially between activities, suggesting there are clear age-related differences in social media use, music, art, sport, and reading. Social media use increased with age, particularly between grades 4 and 7. In contrast, participation in the other activities declined as students got older. Grade 7 students showed greater changes in social media use, music, arts, and reading compared to other grades, especially for social media and reading. In the first year of the pandemic, the probability of social media everyday users increased by 12% in 2020. This probability increased by a further 8% to 2022.

For grade 7 students, the probability of reading every day declined by 6% during the pandemic, while the probability of never reading increased by 7%. Another notable change occurred in 2022, where the probability of reading every day declined by 3% in 2022, while the probability of never reading increased by 5%.

Sensitivity analysis

Sensitivity analysis results are presented in Table S6. Overall, findings were consistent across the two analytical approaches.

Trends in after-school activity participation over time by sex

Gender-stratified analysis showed no notable differences in temporal trends between male and female students (Figure S2-S9, Table S7 and S8).

Discussion

Overview of findings

This large-scale, repeated cross-sectional study investigated the temporal trends in grade 4–9 students' after-school activity participation between 2019 and 2022. Our results show steep increases in social media participation across all ages coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, which were sustained and continued to rise in 2022. Participation in e-games also increased, but at a more modest rate. Conversely, participation in activities such as sport, reading, study, spending time with friends, and clubs declined. Importantly, these declines did not reverse once restrictions were lifted, indicating that the pandemic was associated with lasting shifts in after-school behaviour. However, not all activities were affected by the pandemic. Participation in TV, arts, and chores were relatively stable across the four years. Notably, these temporal patterns were consistent across ages except for grade 7, which showed larger increases in social media use, and bigger declines in music, arts, and reading for fun compared to other grades.

Comparison with previous studies

The rise in whole-day screen time observed during and after the pandemic has been reported (e.g. [14, 25, 41]). One study indicated that children's screen time (TV, e-games, social media, browsing webpages) increased during the pandemic [34]. Similarly, another study reported that students' social media time increased during the pandemic and remained high after public health measures were lifted [25]. The latest study from Israel found that digital device use (social media use, TV, e-games) continued to rise after pandemic restrictions were lifted [41]. These studies collectively indicate that shifts in children's screen-based behaviours remained well beyond the acute phase of the pandemic.

Screen time can be conceptually differentiated into passive and active modes of engagement [43]. Passive screen time refers to sedentary screen-based activities that primarily involve passively receiving information, such as watching television, DVDs, or online videos, with minimal cognitive or physical interaction from the user [43]. In contrast, active screen time involves cognitively or physically engaging with screen-based media, requiring user input, decision-making, or interaction, such as computer use, electronic gaming, or social media engagement [43]. In the present study, participation in TV, a longer-form and predominantly passive mode of screen consumption, was largely maintained during the pandemic. In contrast, social media and e-games, representing a more interactive, scroll-based form of screen engagement, increased markedly. Pandemic-related restrictions may have constrained students’ opportunities to engage in peer-interactive activities, such as sports participation and socialising with friends, disrupting peer connections and intensifying feelings of loneliness [8, 17]. In this context, students may increasingly turn to online platforms that enabled social interaction and connection, particularly social media. Our findings align with previous research, showing that students’ participation in sports declined during the pandemic (e.g. [22, 23, 49]). Similar to screen-based activities, sports have not returned to pre-pandemic levels even after restrictions were lifted. This suggests that the pandemic was a significant disruptor: once families’ routines and commitments to sport were broken, many did not immediately return [22, 23]. Some families may have cancelled memberships and disengaged from organised sports and restarting required not only financial and logistical effort but also renewed motivation. In addition, changes in parental attitudes towards participation in sports may have contributed to this phenomenon [16, 38]. Concerns about children being exposed to the virus, financial difficulties, and lingering uncertainty about restrictions may have made parents less willing to re-enrol their children [16, 38].

Our results indicated heightened vulnerability among Grade 7 students, which coincides with the primary-to-secondary school transition [12, 15, 28]. This school transition is typically accompanied by substantial academic, social, and environmental changes [7]. During this period, students must adapt to increased academic demands, new school structures, and reconfigured peer networks [7]. Reduced school-facilitated support for extracurricular activities in secondary school may also contribute to participation declines in structured activities [20]. Our results indicate that the pandemic amplified the impact of the primary to high school transition by further disrupting normal routines and social supports, which may have intensified declines in structured activities such as music, arts, and sport, alongside increases in screen-based and social activities [28, 32, 33].

Strengths and limitations

To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the first large, population-representative evidence on temporal trends in after-school activity participation. The data are population-level, state-wide, and repeated annually, making them substantially more representative than most previous studies. This repeated cross-sectional design enabled us to disentangle temporal trends from normal developmental changes, an important distinction that has been difficult to establish in prior longitudinal studies. By focusing specifically on after-school hours, rather than whole-day activity, our study also provides a more sensitive indicator of shifts in discretionary behaviour, highlighting patterns that may be masked by structured school-time data.

Limitations must also be acknowledged. This study was based on self-reported questionnaire data, which may be influenced by recall bias and social desirability. In addition, it captures only the frequency of participation in after-school activities (days per week), rather than their duration or intensity. As such, a “moderate” frequency of sports participation may still represent a substantial volume of activity, such as multiple two-hour training sessions each week. Moreover, data collection in 2020 occurred at two time points (Term 2 and Term 3), meaning that not all data were collected during the period of greatest COVID-19 disruption, which may have led to an underestimation of the pandemic’s impact. Finally, the observational nature of this study means we cannot establish a causal relationship between the pandemic and participation in after-school activities.

Implications and future directions

Our findings are concerning. The observed shifts in after-school activity participation were consistent across calendar years and age groups, suggesting that they reflect real and sustained behavioural changes rather than short-term disruption or cohort-specific effects. Importantly, these trends did not show signs of recovery by 2022, despite the lifting of most pandemic-related restrictions. The observed shifts in after-school activity participation may have implications for students’ wellbeing. Previous research has linked participation in organised sport, social interaction, and cognitively engaging activities such as reading with positive mental health, social connectedness, and emotion regulation [37, 48], whereas higher social media use has been associated with both positive and negative outcomes depending on context and intensity [29]. These behavioural shifts are occurring alongside broader population trends of declining youth wellbeing and rising risks of obesity and chronic disease, raising concerns that persistent changes in how children spend after-school time may have long-term implications for health and development.

For practitioners, these findings suggest that a return to pre-pandemic participation patterns should not be assumed. Declines in beneficial after-school activities appear to be system-wide rather than confined to specific activities or sectors, indicating that passive recovery is unlikely. After-school hours represent a critical but often overlooked window for intervention, particularly because they are less structured and more sensitive to disruption than school-time activities. Re-engagement is therefore likely to require proactive and coordinated efforts from schools, sporting organisations, and community providers. Grade 7 emerged as a particularly sensitive period, coinciding with the transition to secondary school. Early secondary school may therefore represent a key opportunity to target programs and supports, such as low-barrier, school-based activities or transition-focused initiatives, to prevent disengagement from structured and enriching activities [13].

At a policy level, these findings are also relevant in the context of growing concern about student’s screen use. Screen time has emerged as a concern among parents and policymakers alike. Our findings add to a growing literature documenting increased screen use at younger ages, with notable escalation in the post-COVID period. In December 2025, the Australian federal government introduced the world’s strictest social media ban, prohibiting children under 16 from holding accounts. They may be helpful but are unlikely to be sufficient on their own. Such policies face implementation challenges and do not directly address declining participation in offline activities. The persistence of these trends highlights a need for greater policy attention and sustained investment in after-school activities as a public health and education priority. Governments may need to explore new delivery models that reduce access barriers, such as expanding structured after-school programs delivered on school sites, strengthening partnerships with community organisations, or improving affordability and transport access. Moreover, the law does not cover gaming or messaging apps and some displacement to these platforms. Accordingly, careful monitoring of all forms of screen use remains important.

Several limitations point to directions for future research. Future studies should include a longer observation period, as only three post-pandemic years and one pre-pandemic year were included in this study. Studies should examine how these changes in activities have impacted students’ health and well-being and whether differences in after-school activities differed by demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Conclusion

Our results indicate adverse changes in students’ engagement in after-school activities following the pandemic. Social media participation increased sharply over the four years. In contrast, participation in sport, reading, study, hanging out with friends, and clubs declined. Temporal patterns were consistent by age except for grade 7. These findings highlight that pandemic-related disruptions have had persistent effects on students’ daily lives and may not resolve without deliberate action. Such disruptions may have impacts on students physical, cognitive, and psychosocial outcomes. Efforts to support re-engagement should be prioritised, particularly for students at key developmental and educational transition points such as commencing secondary school. Future research should examine the effects of these changes on students’ health and wellbeing.

Abbreviations

DfE

Department for Education

IRSD

Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage

LOTE

Language Other Than English

OLR

Ordinal logistic regression

SES

Socio-economic status

WEC

Well-being and Engagement Collection

Authors’ contributions

MZ: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Writing—Original Draft, Visualization, Writing—Review & Editing; CM: Conceptualization, Writing—Review & Editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition; SB: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Writing—Review & Editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition; CJ: Writing—Review & Editing, Resources, Supervision, Funding acquisition; DD: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Writing—Review & Editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition;

Funding

MZ is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and Enterprise Research Scholarship UniSA Funding. DD is supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) DE230101174. CM is supported by a Medical Research Future Fund Investigator Grant APP1193862. The sponsor had no involvement in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing of the report, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Data availability

The datasets are available from the Department for Education (DfE) South Australia upon request.

Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was conducted using de-identified administrative data from the South Australian Wellbeing and Engagement Collection (WEC). This project received an ethics exemption from the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of South Australia (application #202625). The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Informed consent was obtained from all the participants and/or their legal guardians.

Consent for publication

Not Applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.