Today’s youth play a lot of video games. Nearly half (49%) say they play games that can be hooked up to a television such as PlayStation, Xbox or GameCube. Roughly one-third of Gen Xers (35%) play these types of games. Very few Boomers and Seniors spend time playing video games (12% and 3%, respectively). Just over one-third of Nexters (36%) say they played video games in the past seven days. The gender gap on this measure is substantial. Fully half of young men (51%) played video games in the past week compared with 21% of women. Gen Nexters are also big movie-goers. About one-in-ten (11%) say they go out to the movies once a week or more, and 47% say they do so at least once a month. Older generations go out to movies much less frequently — 28% of Gen Xers, 22% of Boomers and 14% of Seniors go to movies at least monthly. When they watch movies at home, Nexters usually rely on DVDs or videos rather than what is being offered on cable or broadcast TV. More than three-quarters of Nexters (77%) say their favorite way to watch a movie at home is watching a DVD or video, while only 17% say they watch movies that are on television. Read More
Young Adults Love Video Games
Russell Heimlich is a former web developer at Pew Research Center.