Video Games Played by 53% of Adult Americans – Pew Study

According to a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 53 percent of all adult Americans now play video games, whether on computers, consoles, mobile phones, handhelds or other devices. Pew found that the younger the adult, the more likely he/she is to play games. While younger adults are far more likely to play games, as the age increases the time spent playing goes down.

Interestingly, for those older adults (65 and up) who do play video games, nearly a third said that they play games everyday, which is actually much higher than younger players that play everyday (20 percent). 

Pew also found age to be important when it comes to the platform on which to play games. Younger adults generally prefer consoles with 75 percent of 18-29 year old gamers playing on consoles, compared with 68 percent for computers. The PC overall, however, is the most popular among the total adult gaming population; 73 percent of American adult gamers said they use a computer to play games, which is 20 percent more than the 53 percent who use consoles. Cell phones and portable gaming devices were much less popular at 35 and 25 percent, respectively.

Although age was a big factor, gender for the most part was not. Men were found to play games only slightly more than women (55 vs. 50 percent).

While gaming has become increasingly popular for adults, it's practically universal among teenagers. Pew said that 97 percent of all teens play video games today.

For more on this survey, you can check out the full report in this pdf.