A new survey from the Entertainment Software Association found that nearly two-thirds of Americans ages 5 to 90 play video games an hour or more per week. — Pixabay
In a divided America, there's one thing that most Americans have in common: playing video games.
A new survey from the Entertainment Software Association found that nearly two-thirds of Americans ages 5 to 90 play video games an hour or more per week. And the players include older Americans: nearly half of Baby Boomers surveyed and 36% of the Silent Generation.
"The average age of the video game player today is 36 years old, and each year it ticks up a bit," said Stanley Pierre-Louis, ESA president and CEO. "One of the things we've seen over time is the continued growth of those who play games and those who stick with games."
The survey defines video games as anything online involving gamification, said Pierre-Louis, meaning that video games in the survey include puzzle games such as Wordle and mobile apps such as Candy Crush or Bejeweled.
The growth is in part due to shifts in behavior because of the Covid pandemic – raising questions about the effect of the increase on mental and physical health.
"One of the things we've seen since the pandemic is people consuming more media, especially on their phones," said Beth Hoffman, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health. "It makes sense that, similar to what we're seeing in terms of more people spending time on social media, they are also playing video games and doing puzzles."
In some cases, the health benefits are clear. Research has shown benefits to senior citizens from doing mental exercises, and games such as Wordle, crosswords or Sudoko are easy sources of brain stimulation.
Even the newly appointed Pope, 69-year-old Pope Leo XIV, plays Words with Friends, according to interviews with his brother, said Pierre-Louis.
"It just shows the scope of games – that everyone plays and there is a game for everyone," he said. "We have to think of video games and who plays in a much broader way than traditional norms would dictate."
The top two reasons that survey respondents in the Baby Boomer (those born from 1946-1964, as defined by Pew Research Center) and Silent Generation (born 1928-1945) listed for playing games are passing time and relaxing (77%) and keeping their minds sharp (65%). Of those generations, 73% report playing puzzle games, while 55% play skill and chance games and 20% play arcade and other games.
Often, seniors start out with digital adaptations of real-life games, and then sometimes move on to other video games. "You may have started playing bridge online, but then you discovered Candy Crush," said Pierre-Louis. "The on-ramp may be something that you are very familiar with."
Those game preferences contrast with younger generations. Generation Z (born 1997-2010) chooses shooter games as its top choice, whereas Generation Alpha (born 2011-2024) prefers arcade games.
As for how they play, more than three-quarters of all generations report playing video games on mobile devices, with Generation X the highest at 87%.
For other platforms, there are stark differences across generations. Nearly 70% of Generation Alpha report playing games on a console, versus just 7% of Boomers and the Silent Generation.
The population most likely to play more than an hour per week of video games is boys in Generation Alpha (88%), followed by Generation Z boys (85%) and Generation Alpha girls (78%).
Excessive video game play is linked to numerous health concerns, such as a sedentary lifestyle, perception of violence, sleep deprivation and depression. But there can also be upsides to game play, especially when those games have a social component.
"There's positives here that we can think about how to accentuate, and negatives to think about how we can minimize those," said Hoffman.
The report noted that most people who play video games regularly have some social component to them, be it Words with Friends or Fortnite with friends.
In the report, 82% of parents who play video games said that they play them with their children, and 52% said they did so at least weekly. Of all players, 55% said that they play video games with others weekly. The majority of game players surveyed from Generation Z and Millennials (born 1981-1996) said that they had met friends through video games who they would not have met otherwise.
Parents in the report also compared video games to other forms of online entertainment, with 70% saying that they preferred their children spend time playing video games than on social media.
Still, said Hoffman, it is worthwhile to question the value of socializing through video games if it is replacing in-person socialisation – a group of 10-year-olds playing Fortnite with each other online, for example, rather than playing at a neighbourhood park. And with video games now a fact of life in both young and old generations, more study is needed to develop best practices.
"It will be an important area of future research to look at what matters when we are looking at recommendations," she said. "Is it total time? Is it certain times per day? If people are playing video games before bed, is that associated with less sleep? It's interesting to tease out some of these nuances." – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Tribune News Service
