Pew: 10% of American Teens Use Virtual Worlds

In a new Pew/Internet report, "Teens, Video Games and Civics," researchers took a look at the prevalence of gaming in American teens and found that, contrary to the contrarian curmudgeons, gaming can actually promote good civic behavior. For that overview, check out MSNBC's take. Pew also turned up some interesting numbers. In a survey of 1,012 American teens from November 2007 to February 2008, virtually all teens (97%) reported playing video games and 10% reported using virtual worlds. Even more interesting is how that use spreads across demographics.

"There are no gender, racial, or ethnic differences in who visits virtual worlds," report the researchers. "However, younger teens are more likely to have visited virtual worlds than older teens, with 13% of 12- to 14-year-olds visiting them, compared to just 8% of teens ages 15-17. Teens who play games daily are also more likely to visit virtual worlds (16%) than teens who play games weekly or less often (8%)."

Those numbers match up fairly well with those of eMarketer. Last fall, Debra Aho Williamson found that 24% of American child and teen Internet users reported visiting virtual worlds monthly, with  9% visiting a virtual world weekly. She predicted that monthly use would hit 53% by 2011. But, as Pew points out, younger teens are slightly more active in virtual worlds, and it seems like, overall, the pre-teen segement (6-12) is even more active, which may pull eMarketer's numbers upwards.

Those splits also might be more limited to America. K Zero has a Q3 2008 update of its virtual worlds universe graph, showing 41.5 million registered accounts in the 5-10 range and 209 million in the 10-15 range. There's sure to be some overlap there, though, in demographics and also in looking at registered accounts compared to active use.   As always, though, Nic Mitham's numbers are definitely worth checking out.

What may put virtual worlds at a disadvantage is the mode of access. According to Pew, 86% of teens use consoles to play games on (though that includes online and off-) compared to 73% using desktops or laptops.

There's another opportunity for growth, however: 48% of American teens report using a cell phone or handheld organizer to game. I'd imagine most of those can't handle full 3D environments (that'll change), but there's an increasing interest in providing lightweight mobile environements (see Disney's tie-in for its Fairies virtual world) and even some success (for example, Sulake's MiniFriday.com).

And, as always, the activity in the younger set keeps me pretty optimistic about the future!