“GAMES” AS AN ETHICAL SPACE AND LIFE-LEARNING PLATFORM FOR YOUNG GAMERS

Abstract

This article aims to examine the social construction of the label “game-addicted child” and its consequences, in order to reflect on the process by which such children develop ethics of the self that enable them to overcome social stigmatization. The study also aims to explore the transformative development of ethical selfhood shaped by their lived experiences. Employing a qualitative research approach grounded in a critical paradigm, this research utilizes critical narrative inquiry to collect data from individuals who were once stigmatized as game-addicted children and who have successfully overcome asuch social constructions. The findings reveal three key dimensions: The label “game-addicted child” is constructed through institutional frameworks-particularly family and school-which associate gaming with academic failure and moral deficiency. This stigmatization often pushes children to seek refuge in the gaming world as a space for validation and meaning. Upon encountering critical turning points-often tied to experiences of shame or exclusion-participants began to exercise technologies of the self. They reframed gaming as a “life laboratory” for developing technical and social skills, eventually reclaiming agency over their own life trajectories. The culmination of this transformation is the emergence of ethical selfhood-not by conforming to social morality, but through the formulation of personal principles. These include an ethic of balance that transcends binary judgments of gaming as good or bad, and an ethic of integration that creatively harnesses past experiences for present growth. Ultimately, the findings highlight that what is often labeled as “game addiction” is not merely a pathological condition but a lived site of resistance and ethical self-formation. Rather than being passive recipients of disciplinary power, these children actively engage in practices that reframe their identities and values. Their experiences demonstrate how the self can emerge ethically even under the pervasive gaze and judgment of institutional power.