35% of Parents also Gamers?!

Posted by dkidwell on January 27th, 2006 — Posted in parenting

501 parents were surveyed by the ESA last November from across the country.

• These were parents of 2-17 year olds
• ‘Gamer parent’ was definied as parents who play computer or video games, but not only desktop card games or childrens games.

Of those surveyed – a whopping 35% were gamer parents. 80% reported gaming with their children, and of those 66% felt “that playing games has brought their families closer together.”

But the good news doesn’t stop there. 73% are not only engaged parents, those folks are engaged voters.

A vast majority (85 percent) of all voter parents (both gamer and non-gamer) say that they — not government, retailers, or game publishers –should take the most responsibility in monitoring childrens’ exposure to games that may have content that is inappropriate for minors. Further, by a nearly two to one margin (60% vs. 36%) parents agree that it is not the role of government to regulate game sales in an attempt to protect kids from exposure to violent and/or sexual video game content. “This research suggests that proposals to regulate video games may backfire with American voters who, unlike some elected officials, appear to fully understand that they should control the entertainment that comes into their homes,” Lowenstein said.

Italics up there are mine; isn’t that a nice statistic to wake up to? Interestingly, the Republican/Democratic spilt is nearly equal (35%/36%). Are those legislators listening to this? This is indicating a significant population of parents who are actively playing games with their kids, savvy voters, and willing to take on personal responsibility!

Whoohoo!

The ESA press release is worth looking at. The folks over at Gamers with Jobs have a post about it.

Viva la GamerParents!