Digital Games and Family Life
Once a novelty restricted to arcades, video games have become a deeply embedded part of our lives. As digital game platforms have become increasingly more affordable and more accessible over the past forty years, it has become clear that games aren’t just fun to play, but can motivate people of all ages to learn more deeply and to improve productivity.
As part of our Families and Media Project, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center conducted a survey of nearly 700 parents whose 4-13-year old children play video games. While other past national surveys have explored specific facets of children’s or adults’ gameplay, our survey attempts to learn more about the role that video games play in family life and routines.
We are pleased to present this data as a series of infographics, each featuring a particular facet of video games and family life.
- Understanding when, where, and how kids play video games (September 2016)
- Exploring the games and titles kids and parents choose to play (October 2016)
- When parents and kids play together (December 2016)
- Families play both board/card games and digital games together (January 2017)
- Parents on how digital games affect family life (May 2017)
This series of infographics is based on data from an online survey that the Cooney Center conducted in 2014. The sample comprised 696 parents in the U.S. who had at least one 4-13-year-old who played digital games. Snowball sampling techniques were used to enlist participants and, therefore, the sample is not representative of the U.S. population in terms of geography (5 states are not represented in the sample), SES, or race/ethnicity. Participants who completed the 20-minute survey were eligible to enter a drawing for four $50 Amazon gift cards.
