Playing for Wellness: A Diary Study of Videogame Usage and Adolescent Wellbeing

Adolescence is often associated with emotional upheaval and teens themselves value support with their emotions. HCI research on emotion regulation has focused on lab-based interventions for those with the greatest needs. This paper explores how adolescents use commercially available videogames in their daily environments and how these practices relate to emotion regulation. We conducted a 2-week diary and interview study with eleven teens asking them to reflect on their videogame practices and emotions. We deployed a multimodal diary to encourage authentic teen voice on factors not typically considered in intervention studies. Our findings indicate that teens use videogames to regulate their emotions and to recover from stress in diverse ways. These processes are often intertwined with adolescents’ social relationships and can be mediated through game affordances. We argue that traditional approaches to emotion regulation may be too individualistic to recognise or support the social dynamics that define teens’ emotional lives.