The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Teens are fueling an e-gaming tidal wave
At least half of teens and young adults play or watch online games.
Video games have come a long way since the days of Atari and Sega. Instead of pulling up a beanbag chair to the tube TV in your parents’ basement, now there are worldwide competitions among top-ranked gamers and players streaming their games to millions of subscribers on YouTube. But beyond serious gamers playing the latest edition of Call of Duty, how many people are actually involved in the world of e-gaming?
A ton, in fact, including legions of teen and young adult gamers, according to a Washington Post-University of Massachusetts Lowell poll.
Almost three-quarters of Americans ages 14 to 21 either played or watched multiplayer online games or competitions in the previous year. Half of adults under 30 have played or watched online games, as have a quarter of adults overall.
In order to learn more about these online competitive gamers, the Washington Post and the University of Massachusetts Lowell conducted a survey asking random samples of 1,000 adults and an additional 522 14-21 year-olds whether they had either played an online video game with multiple players, participated in a video game competition, or watched live or recorded video of people playing video games in the previous 12 months.
Strikingly, watching other people play video games is just as popular as playing games themselves. A 58 percent majority of teens and young adults (ages 14-21) have watched people play video games on websites like Twitch and YouTube, while 59 percent report playing online multiplayer games. Almost half of teens and young adults, 45 percent, both play and watch video games. Among U.S. adults overall, 18 percent play, 16 percent watch and 9 percent do both.
Gaming is widely popular among both male and female teenagers and young adults, though there is a gender gap. A 56 percent majority of girls and women ages 14-21 are gamers, albeit far lower than the 89 percent of teenage boys and men who play or watch online multiplayer games. Among all teen and young adult gamers, 62 percent are male while 38 percent are female.
The gender gap among adults is very similar to teen and young adult competitive e-gamers — 61 percent are male while 39 percent are female. But with the much smaller share overall of adults who are competitive gamers,
smaller shares of both genders say they play or watch online multiplayer video games — 3 in 10 men and 2 in 10 women. That figure increases among younger adults, 18 to 39 years old with 56 percent of men and 29 percent of women who are gamers.
Even with many female gamers, there’s a common perception that women aren’t treated with respect in the gaming community. A 42 percent plurality of adult competitive gamers say women are treated with less respect than men in the online video gaming community, along with almost half, 49 percent of teen and young adult gamers. That rises to 58 percent of teen-
Gaming is popular among teens and young adults of nearly all income levels and family backgrounds, the Post-UMass Lowell poll found.
age girl and young women gamers who say women are treated with less respect.
The Post-UMass Lowell poll finds gaming is popular among teens and young adults of nearly all income levels and family backgrounds. Roughly 7 in 10 teens and young adults whose parents have incomes above and below $50,000 are gamers, as are similar percentages of those regardless of their parents are college graduates or married.
Teen and young adult competitive e-gamers are similar ethnically to those who are nongamers — over half of both groups are white, 23 percent of each are Hispanic and a slightly higher proportion of African-Americans are gamers than nongamers (15 percent vs. 9 percent). Asians make up a similar 2 percent of gamers and 3 percent of nongamers.
Among adults, there’s a higher proportion of nongamers who are white (65 percent) than competitive gamers (55 percent). Competitive e-gamers are slightly more likely to be Hispanic (20 percent) or African-American (16 percent) than nongamers (13 and 10 percent, respectively).