Gaming remains more popular amongst boys than girls
90% of males aged 14-17 are playing games as compared with 67% of girls in the same age group. Interest in games begins young, around 5-10 years, often when they get their first computer game.
Male gamers are spending 13 hours a week playing games, compared to 7.5 hours for females.
For boys, gaming offers a competitive outlet as well as focus for their play activities. Whilst ‘isolation’ and ‘aggression’ concerns have been raised by both parents and boys themselves, one of the positives for gaming is that it builds up a sense of achievement on completion of a game or a level within a game.
Girls have a different relationship with games. Gaming doesn’t become an ‘identity’ to them as it does for boys – very few girls see themselves as ‘gamers’. For girls, games are downtime rather than uptime and they prefer casual games such as tetris and solitaire. This is not saying girls lack competitive spirit, but that games do not provide the same reward to them as it does for boys.
Interest in gaming drops with age, primarily because connecting and socialising with friends becomes more important for youths as they get older, and as such, technologies that offer this feeling of ‘being connected’ dominate (Email, IM, mobile, social networks).
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