Bedrooms, Media Use in

The bedroom has long been a space in which children and adolescents both retreat and socialize, articulate maturity, and construct identity—and often all by negotiating the discourses of mass media. Whereas children may view their bedrooms as spaces for utility (to play, dress, and sleep, for example), adolescents treat their bedrooms both as safe havens from a world they are only beginning to negotiate as adults and as spaces in which they often have complete control over their surroundings and behaviors. The bedroom is often an adolescent's only private space, and the bedroom doors of teens often are marked with “Keep Out” signs. Conversely, the bedroom can function as a meeting space for socialization among peers, where friends may gather to listen to music, hover over a computer, or simply chat about their lives.

While a child is under the age of 10, the decor and design of his or her bedroom is largely determined by the parents, but from early adolescence on, teens use the walls of their bedrooms in large part to articulate identity and express personal creativity or cultural conformity. Television and film media have latched on to this idea, for example, by taking audiences into the carefully crafted bedrooms of Wally Cleaver of Leave It to Beaver, with its model airplanes and pile of homework, and of Seth Cohen of The OC, with Seth's homage to favorite band, Death Cab for Cutie. Even The Brady Bunch centered entire episodes around bedroom decor as Greg and Marsha Brady hung beads and carefully placed peace signs in their rooms—symbols that they were too old for the rooms of their siblings (which were filled with sports paraphernalia and stuffed animals and dolls) and that they were members of early 1970s culture.

Adolescents'rooms constitute cultures of their own, often rife with symbols of their occupants'gender, age, and generation; but, at the same time, they function as personal spaces in which teens may experiment with decorative taste and individuality. Adolescents use the walls of their bedrooms to continuously construct and articulate identity as they move into adulthood. Their statements of identification depend largely on the mass media and on adolescents' perceptions of what should be on their walls and shelves. These perceptions are largely dictated to them by the television shows and movies they watch, as well as the music they listen to (media activities that often take place in the bedroom, interestingly). This may mean carefully placed advertisements of scantily clad models from Abercrombie & Fitch placed next to a favorite childhood stuffed animal, and loud rock music blaring from speakers with childhood soccer trophies on top of them.

Conversely, as adolescents actively construct themselves by what they place on the walls of their bedrooms, their private use of media in the bedroom arguably also shapes their hopes and fears for their lives. In the bedroom, teens often experience media alone, so the media tend to weave together the private and public sides of adolescents' attitudes and identities.

As a station for more active media use, the bedroom is very much an epicenter of activity. As in ages past, the bedroom is a place to retreat to read books, both for school and pleasure, and to flip through the latest magazines. It is a time when youth back away from sharing media with the family—such as getting [Page 114]together on the sofa to watch a favorite television show—to privately and individually consuming media, especially if it is possible to do so in the sanctuary of the bedroom. Through this solitary media use, adolescents may be better situated to cultivate more self-reflective, private personas. The imagery, words, and sounds with which they surround themselves help them make sense of their lives and can offer a sense of stability in their sometimes-turbulent lives.

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