BRIEF REPORT
College Students’ Video Game Participation
and Perceptions: Gender Differences
and Implications
Shirley Matile Ogletree
&
Ryan Drake
Published online: 21 March 2007
#
Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract As growing numbers of youth in the United
States play video games, potential effects of game playing
are being considered. We focused on gender-related aspects
of gaming in a study of 206 college students. Men were
significantly more likely than women to play video games
two or more hours a week and to indicate that video game
playing interfered with sleeping and with class preparation.
A greater proportion of women than men complained about
the amount of time their significant other played video
games. Participants rated female video game characters as
significantly more helpless and sexually provocative than
male characters and as less likely to be strong and
aggressive. Gender differences in participation and charac-
ter portrayals potentially impact the lives of youth in a
variety of ways.
Keywords Gender and gaming
.
Gender and video game
content
.
Academic and relational implications of gaming
Video games have become a popular pastime for many
youths in modern societies. According to the Interactive
Digital Software Association (2005), one-half of all people
in the United States play video games. This statistic most
likely underestimates video game playing in older children
and adolescents. As early as 1995, Phillips, Rolls, Rouse,
and Griffiths reported that 77% of a sample of 11–16 year-
olds played video games; most individuals played between
30 and 60 min/day. More recently a study by the Kaiser
Family Foundation (Rideout, Roberts, & Foehr, 2005)
showed that 83% of 8–18 year-olds had at least one game
console in their homes.
Concerns have been raised in terms of the possible
effects of violent video games (Anderson & Bushman,
2001; K. E. Dill & J. C. Dill, 1998; Griffiths, 1999;
Haninger & Thompson, 2004; Kronenberger et al., 2005)as
well as possible gender-related effects. Wright et al. (2001)
reported that more boys than girls played video games at
least once based on two 24-h-time use diaries for three age
groups: 3–5 year olds, 6–8 year-olds, and 9–12 year-olds.
According to a recent release by the Kaiser Foundation
(Rideout et al., 2005), 8–10 year-old boys play more
minutes per day than children of other age groups;
approximately 73% play video games on a typical day
and average about 93 min of game play per day. Others
have also reported gender differences in children’s video
game playing (Bickham et al., 2003; Woodard & Gridina,
2000), and the 2003 consumer survey by Interactive Digital
Software Association (2003) showed that about 72% of the
most frequent players are boys/men. In arcades, video
games are more often played by boys/men than by girls/
women (Jurica, Alanis, & Ogletree, 2002).
Even though a gender difference in children’sand
adolescents’ game playing has frequently been reported,
the data regarding college students are less clear and not
often reported. In fact, according to Gardyn (2003),
approximately equal numbers of men and women in college
play video games. Does the well-documented video gaming
gender difference at younger ages disappear at the college
level?
Gender is also a relevant issue in the content of video
games. More video games seem to be male-oriented than
female-oriented. Scharrer (2004
) examined 1,054 video
Sex Roles (2007) 56:537–542
DOI 10.1007/s11199-007-9193-5
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the
Rocky Mountain Psychological Association in Phoenix, April 2005.
S. M. Ogletree (*)
:
R. Drake
Department of Psychology, Texas State University,
San Marcos, TX 78666, USA
e-mail: so01@txstate.edu