This article explores how young people in Sweden talk about and understand violence, with a particular emphasis on how violence, gender, space and time are co-constructed in this discourse. We found that young people display an ambivalent relation to violence reinforcing several contradictory discourses of violence. Young people employ various understandings that place violence differently in time (ongoing vs. past) and space (distant/absent vs. close/present). They discursively construct the school as a non-violent space while considering digital spaces to be violent. Yet, they still find violence as occurring at different places and times at school. These ‘discursive manoeuvres’ highlight how talk of violence territorialises and re-territorialises places as ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’ and takes part in the gendered spatial regulation of young people’s lives. By specifically analysing time and space in young people’s discourse on violence, the article contributes to research on their perspectives on gendered violence.