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Video games have often been accused of encroaching on the social lives of young people. However, according to an Ifop study from December 2021, they would have allowed young people to maintain an active social life during confinement.
Far from clichés, have video games allowed thousands of teenagers to create social ties during the pandemic? This is in any case what seems to emerge from a study by Ifop carried out in collaboration with HyperX*.
Video games, a family activity?
Among the main figures of the study, we learn that 94% of adolescents are entertained at least occasionally with video games and more than one adult in eight claims to play regularly. More surprisingly, a majority of parents (58%) play regularly with their children.
“The perception of video games is changing positively, even if parents are still cautious on certain points (time spent, impact on health, etc.). Nevertheless, thanks to the enthusiasm of the youngest, the majority of parents are encouraged to share video game activities with the family, offering parents the possibility of better appropriating this hobby and therefore better supporting their teenagers with these media.“, summarized Vanessa Lalo, psychologist specializing in digital practices.
Video games are increasingly seen as a family activity. The study also specifies that 76% of parents who play video games with their teenager felt they had grown closer and shared more moments together.
A positive image of video games
Through the study, the whole image of the video game itself seems to have changed. Once mocked and despised, the gaming community seems to be changing. According to the study, 7 out of 10 adolescents consider video games to be a social practice in their own right, almost as much as football (78%). An opinion not necessarily shared by parents who only adhere to 42% of this idea.
“Following successive confinements and curfews, we have been able to observe that parents are gradually changing their view of video games, no longer seeing it as a single object of family conflict, but also as a vector of social ties and well-being. -to be psychological for their children, in this exceptional period of pandemic having deprived us of our ordinary social, school, professional, cultural habits“, explained Vanessa Lalo in the study.
The rise of video games, reinforced by the various confinements, was above all for adolescents a means of better supporting this period and of succeeding in maintaining links with their family circle and friends.
The study claims that 63% of teenagers felt that video games allowed them to stay in touch with their friends. If the study was carried out with HyperXa company specializing in the video game sector, remains that the figures seem to reflect a real change.