Future Time Orientation and Its Relevance for Development as Action

Abstract

Slogans such as "no future" have frequently been used recently to describe the unattractive situation of adolescents who are faced with enormous economic, social, and political problems and insecurities. It should be interesting to study how adolescents themselves anticipate and evaluate their future and which variations may exist among certain groups of adolescents. This should be especially interesting when pursuing the more general question of which function future orientation may have for the development of adolescents. One may assume that the way adolescents anticipate and evaluate their future influences their life planning, decision making, and behavior. One may even hypothesize that adolescents construct their own future according to the future orientation they develop.