Engl. transl.: Young people, addiction and computer games as a bedroom culture

Based on a qualitative interview study, the article examines young people's perspectives on a high-frequency and problematic use of computer games. ‘The youth perspectives’, ‘bedroom culture’ and ‘computer game addiction and self-regulation’ are used as a theoretical framework to focus on young people's computer games in the bedroom. The bedroom culture is present and present in the young people's self-understandings together with the assumptions about computer game addiction, and the resulting regulatory discussions about how much time young people may spend on playing, what is appropriate and inappropriate use of computer games, what is healthy and unhealthy at computer games as a sedentary leisure activity. Despite the adolescents 'own concerns and the parents' concerns that the adolescents may smoke in a pathology hole, the adolescents continue to play computer games. Therefore, the bedroom culture can also be seen as a resistance to the surveillance mechanisms that society has put in place so that the computer game does not take precedence. The computer game functions in a flash as a ‘time out’ from the requirement to develop techniques for self-regulation. The 'fight' between the young people and their parents over the computer game will, for the young people, also be about escaping surveillance.

"The young people's bedroom culture shows the complexity of regulating young people's high-frequency use of computer games. The youth perspectives as a theoretical starting point create thoughts about free space and young people as possible co-creators of the computer game culture in the bedroom. In sharp contrast to this are both the young people's own concerns about computer game addiction and the parents with their educational repertoire - which apparently changes to be a media panic repertoire as the young people get older, are more independent and energetic. In this way, parents' attempts to 'normalize' the young people's high-frequency and problematized use of computer games and the young people's self-regulatory techniques will be based on the 'fear' that the young people will fall into a pathology hole. The disease picture can create fear, but it is not necessarily fruitful in the dialogue with the young people and for the young people's self-esteem" (p. 104)