Some 53% of American adults age 18 and older play video games,¹ and about one in five adults (21%) play everyday or almost everyday. While the number of video gamers among adults is substantial, it is still well under the number of teens who play. Fully 97% of teens play video games.²

Independent of all other factors, younger adults are considerably more likely than older adults to play games, and the likelihood that an adult is a video gamer decreases significantly with age. Fully 81% of respondents 18-29 years old play games, while only 23% of respondents 65 years old and older report playing games.

Overall, men (55%) are slightly more likely than women (50%), and urbanites (56%) are a bit more likely than rural-dwellers (47%) to play any kind of digital game. There is no significant difference in game playing across income groups or between suburbanites and adults from other locales.

A person’s education level is another predictor of video game play. Some 57% of respondents with at least some college education play games, significantly more than high school graduates (51%) and those who have less than a high school education (40%). Current students who are 18 or older are also avid players. Notably, 76% of students (82% of full-time and 69% of part-time students) report playing games, compared with 49% of non-students.

Internet users are also significantly more likely to play games than those who are not online. Fully 75% of adults in the survey use the internet, and 64% of internet users play games. By comparison, just 20% of non-internet users play games.