New survey about those who game

A new national survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project illustrates just how ingrained video games have become in youth culture—a phenomenon with important implications for 21st-century learning.

The survey found that while young Americans don’t necessarily play the same thing, nearly all of them—boys and girls—play video games of one kind or another. And they don’t just play by themselves. Nearly two-thirds play video games to socialize face-to-face with friends and
family, while just over a quarter said they play with Internet friends.

“It shows that gamers are social people,” says Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at Pew who led the report on the survey. “They communicate just as much. They spend time face-to-face, just as much as other kids. They email and text.”

The survey, released Sept. 16, combined the telephone responses from a nationally representative sample of 1,102 young people, ages 12 to 17, and their parents.
Performed from November 2007 through February of this year, and partly funded by the MacArthur Foundation, it had a margin of error of three percentage points.
Among other things, the survey found that:

• Ninety-seven percent of young respondents play video games. That’s 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls, with little difference in the percentages among various racial and ethnic groups and incomes. In fact, 7 percent of those surveyed said they didn’t have a computer at home, but they did have a game console—such as Sony Corp.’s PlayStation, Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox, or Nintendo Co.’s Wii.

• They play often. When surveyed, half of the respondents said they had played a video game the previous day.

• Their games of choice are as diverse as their tastes in music or TV. Eighty percent of respondents play five or more different game genres, with racing, puzzles, sports, and
action the most common. Favorites were Guitar Hero, Halo 3, Madden NFL, solitaire, and Dance Dance Revolution.

• Young people are routinely able to get their hands on games that are rated “M” (for mature) or “AO” (adults only). Three-quarters of parents who were surveyed said they “always” or “sometimes” check the ratings on their kids’ games. And yet, half of boys who were questioned
listed a game with an “M” or “AO” rating as one of their favorites, compared with 14 percent of girls.

Regardless, Pew researchers said they want to steer clear of depicting video games as “good” or “bad,” says Joseph Kahne, a study co-author and dean of the education
school at Mills College in California. He noted, for instance, that even games with violent content,
such as Halo, provided “more than average opportunities for players to help one another.”
Kahne also looked at games’ effect on civic engagement— anything from political involvement to raising money for charity. He found that those who spent the most time playing video games weren’t any less likely to be involved in their communities.

The survey did, however, find that those who played games in face-to-face social settings were more likely to say they were committed to civic participation. Mimi Ito, an anthropologist who studies the use of new media, said more research is needed to explain this phenomenon.
But she speculates the ties that gamers make with “real-life local friends” stimulate civic engagement. “Gaming is the reason to get together—but they’re probably
talking about other things,” says Ito, who’s based at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center of Communication. For this and other reasons, Ito cautioned parents against
negative stereotypes about video games. How young people play a game, she says, is as important as what they play.

To that end, Jesse Schell, a professor of entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon University, hoped the report would encourage parents to learn more about the
video games their children play. “If more parents would take the time to play the same
things their children are playing—or even better, play with them—it would benefit both parents and children,” says Schell, who teaches video game design.

What does this mean for those of us who complain about the amount of time kids spend gaming? What does this say about how teachers teach?

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