Mediating Young People’s Bedrooms: The ‘Virtual Bedroom’?

Abstract

Young people’s bedrooms are not just physical spaces within which their identities can be represented but they can also be understood as ‘mediated’ spaces within which there are continual and complex interactions between young people and physical, virtual, public and private spheres. It is within the interactions of these spheres that young people often find themselves suspended and in a perennial state of ‘in-between-ness’; in the ‘blur’ of the many boundaries created between these spheres. In the previous chapter I utilised the concept of ‘zoning’ (Lincoln, 2004, 2005) as a way in which to understand the uses of personal and private spaces such as bedrooms by young people as spaces within which the boundaries of public and private are inherently blurred and within which the negotiation of these boundaries is done. As I have argued, young people commonly find themselves suspended in this ‘blur’ and thus use ‘fixed’ physical spaces such as their bedrooms as spaces within which to authenticate and legitimate their identities, or at least some elements of them, in a world of risk and uncertainty.

I could put the effort into MySpace or Facebook but I’d rather go out. (James, 16 years old)