Study: 72% of teens play games, but boys overshadow girls in online play

The Pew Research Center published an interesting report this month of results from studying online social behaviors of American teens suggesting that, while the majority (72 percent) of boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 17 play video games, teen girls are far less likely than their male counterparts to regularly play games online.

Specifically, 84 percent of boys and 59 percent of girls who were surveyed in a recent study said they played video games on either a console, PC or mobile device. Of those, 34 percent of boys said they played games online every day, while just 8 percent of girls said the same. 

It's an intriguing piece of data in light of the populer perception of online games as spaces dominated by the voices of young men. In fact, the report goes onto claim that while 71 percent of teen boys who play games online choose to use voice chat while doing so, 72 percent of girls do not.

That's not necessarily because girls are any more likely than boys to play games on mobile devices, either. "This was not the case at all," study co-author Amanda Lenhart told Kotaku. "I was surprised by the number of girls who played all kinds of games."

The full report is worth reading in full over on the Pew Research Center website for further insight into how teens create (and destroy) social relationships while playing video games. If you prefer a .pdf version, you can find that right here.