A new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, an initiative of the Pew Research Center, has come up with some intriguing results and some mundane ones. The study, called "Teens, Video Games and Civics: Teens' gaming experiences are diverse and include significant social interaction and civic engagement," was meant to show the relation of civic-minded behavior, but you can learn much about the perception of gaming and how it impacts the lives of children and teenagers. The results are interesting in that they're banal: gaming is like going to the movies, and it's hard to draw many conclusions from the fact that someone is a gamer.

The first fact to jump out from the survey is how many people game, 97 percent of children and teenagers ages 12 to 17 claim to have played some kind of video game, with 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls saying they play games. The number drops when you look at daily gamers, 65 percent of daily gamers are male while 35 percent of daily gamers are female. The most popular genres? Surprisingly, racing comes in first with 74 percent of teens playing games like Mario Kart or Gran Turismo, with puzzle games a close second at 72 percent and sports games coming in third with 68 percent.

Gaming is also a social activity, with 65 percent of teens playing games with others in the room with them, while 27 percent of teens are playing online. Eighty-two percent of teens say they play games alone, although 72 percent of gamers in that group also play games with others. That's a long set of numbers that prove that gaming has become a way for teens to socialize, and is more often than not a social activity with their peers, not an antisocial hobby enjoyed alone in the room. Online gaming is also just a tool to do more socializing, as 47 percent of teens are playing online with people they know in real life.

Online gaming and... political involvement?

Here's the kicker: if you're playing games with others in the room, you're trending slightly toward a politically active life. If you're playing games with others and you're a teenager, you have a 65 percent chance of going online for political news, compared to 60 percent of those who do not. You also have a 26 percent chance that you have persuaded others in how to vote, compared to 19 percent who do not. OK, these aren't huge gaps, but it does seem to show that those who play games with others are slightly more engaged in politics.

Interestingly enough, teens who take part in social interactions about games, such as discussing them online, seem to be more engaged politically as well. Eighteen percent of those teens who play games and engage in social interaction related to games have participated in protests in some manner over the last year, compared to eight percent who aren't social gamers. That confirms a long-held belief that people who comment on game reviews are loud people who aren't interested in a real dialog... I kid because I care.

The last important piece of information to be gained from this study was how parents viewed games, and among the respondents it doesn't seem like parents had any strong reactions: 62 percent of parents whose kids play games say the gaming hasn't been a positive or negative influence, with 19 percent saying it's a positive influence. Parents who have children who don't play games are much more negative in their assessment, with 55 percent saying gaming is a negative influence and only three percent seeing it as a positive influence.



Data source: Pew

While the amount that gaming affects civic activities may be enough to write about, the data shows many other things about gaming: children and teens are almost all playing, they play many different kinds of games, and parents are starting to see the activity as just another way their kids spend their time. Also, gaming is a way for teenagers to socialize. This data also makes it more difficult to link gaming to negative, anecdotal trends. After all, when every teenager is gaming, every teenager will be "found to be a gamer" when it suits news outlets.

Hopefully that angle will be soon extinguished by studies such as this.