Video Games Aren’t Just for Teenagers
Video Games Aren’t Just for Teenagers
Video Games Aren’t Just for Teenagers
By Alina Tugend
February 23, 2021
Summary
According to an AARP survey, 44% of adults over 50 years old played video games in 2019 at least once a month-the average is five hours a week-compared with only 38% in 2016.
The AARP survey includes players of all sorts of computer or video games, and the majority say they play puzzle and logic games, such as Sudoku or Words With Friends.
Senior vice president of AARP Research, says a 2020 survey by MRI-Simmons found that about a quarter of gamers over 50 play multiplayer games using a video system and one-third of that group identifies as medium or heavy players.
Older people used to discover video games through their children or grandchildren; now, Bryant says, it is more "About their generation and their friends." Kids raised on video games in the 1970s and 1980s, when video games first became popular, are inching toward senior status.
Most video games can now be played on PCs, laptops, tablets and phones, and the variety of games is endless.
One group played the video game World of Warcraft, a popular interactive fantasy game, for 14 hours over two weeks.
A later study, in 2017, recruited 33 people, ages 55 to 75, who were randomly assigned to either play the classic video game Super Mario 64 for 30 minutes a day over six months, learn the piano for the same amount of time or not do any particular task.
Shooting games, such as Call of Duty, West says, don't promote better brain function the same way games that require navigating or building do.
The main thing is to keep learning new games or play different levels of the same game.
Some senior gamers have made a name for themselves, such as Shirley Curry, 84, who has amassed hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers, who follow her playing the fantasy video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Reference
Tugend, A. (2021, February 23). Video Games Aren't Just for Teenagers. Kiplinger. https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/happy-retirement/602296/video-games-arent-just-for-teenagers