The Pew Research Center recently did a study that confirmed something all of us here already knew – teenage girls play video games. Not just “girly” mobile games like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, but games of all types. The only difference? They tend to do so in a solitary fashion – not playing online, or even in rooms with other people – and on the rare occasions they do go online, they don’t use their mics at all. It’s almost as if they know that online gaming can be a harsh environment for female humans.
In the study, entitled Teens, Technology, and Friendship, over 1,000 teens were surveyed. Of those girls surveyed:
- 60% say they play games on consoles, computers, or on their phones
- 47% say they never play online
- 27% say they never pay with anyone in the same room (some of these overlap with the ones who don’t play online)
Regarding the girls who do play online, here’s where things get interesting, and not just a little bit sad. A quarter of teenage girls who play video games play online at least once a month. However, only 28% of girls who play online use the mic to talk to other players (compared to 70% of teen boys who play online). According to Kotaku:
These two numbers—only 28 percent of the girls who play video games use voice chat, and only 25 percent of the girls who play video games go online even once a month—are taken from two different samples in the study and can’t be directly compared. So I asked Amanda Lenhart, one of the lead authors of the study, to crunch the numbers to find out what percentage of all teenage girls use voice chat while playing video games.
It’s 9 percent. Almost 60 percent of all teenage girls play video games. Not even 10 percent of teenage girls open their mouths and speak in public video game spaces.
The study focuses exclusively on numbers, and so there’s no indication of why these numbers are so low. It could be that many girls consider gaming a solitary activity, whereas when they want to be social, there are other ways they prefer. Or, it could be that boys and men aren’t exactly the most inclusive folks ever when playing games online. Whatever the reason, something that can’t be denied is the fact that women and girls game, and that they have a diverse interest in games.
Those girls should feel free to game how they like. If they’re simply not into socializing or conversing while they game, so be it. But if they’re being kept away because male gamers make them feel unwelcome or targeted, this is something that needs to be remedied.
(Image via Rodrigo Della Fávera on Flickr)
—Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.—
Do you follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?
