Gender Differences in the Social Integration of the New Technologies with Teen's Leisure Time: Preference or Imposition?

According to the ‘Social Technology’ approach, in the current circumstances, ICTS have been integrated with the leisure activities. These activities have been embedded in the broader frame of external action requirements and conditions in which the actor’s choice is determined. In terms of gender differences, this article seeks to typify the sorts of leisure activities, namely outdoor-oriented and technology-oriented, and to discover teens’ real preference about choosing those activities. Accordingly, in the school year 2016-17, 120 teenage girls and boys were interviewed (via the semi-structured interview technique) in Tehran city according to the typical and purposive samplings. The results show that teens’ primary preference is the outdoor-oriented leisure activities; but actually the social circumstances, the frame of pressures, and socio-cultural necessities bring them the technology-oriented leisure activities, in as much as the new technologies are partly manifested in a figure of a friend. Boys choose the PC/Console games as a leisure activity more than girls, and they are affected further under the excitements of them while girls encounter with more restrictions for the outdoor-oriented leisure activities. Anyhow, the technology-oriented leisure activities have become as an identity and consumption source for most teens