How much time do Americans spend playing video games? [Survey]

Interesting findings

68% of Americans play video games regularly, as opposed to “sometimes” or “never.” 

• The largest share of Americans (46%) spend no more than 1–3 hours gaming in a row, a trend consistent across respondents of all ages.
• The largest share of respondents (30%) play 8–12 hours of video games per week.
• During the second year of social distancing in 2021, Americans’ weekly time spent gaming with others increased from 6.6 hours in 2020 to 7.5 hours, according to Statista.
• Most people across generations (33%) play video games primarily for the mental stimulation. Gen Z is a notable exception, with the largest share (31%) saying they play because they’re “obsessed”—it’s one of their favorite pastimes.
• Despite PlayStation 2 being the top-selling video game console of all time, according to Statista, it ranked behind mobile gaming in our survey.
• Americans spend more time gaming on mobile devices than on any other console. The majority of people who play mobile games (57%) like knowing they can entertain themselves anywhere.
• Boomers are the only generation in which the majority doesn’t play open-world games (76%). 
• At 120 hours, Skyrim takes more time to beat than any open-world game on our list, according to How Long To Beat—and just 8% of our survey respondents spend the most time playing it.
• Gen Z and Millennials are the most likely generations to play to win, constantly trying to beat records and come out on top.
• Gen Z is the only generation that spends more time playing first-person shooter games than other genres (29%).
• 29% of respondents spend more time playing Grand Theft Auto than any other open-world game. Gen X plays it the most out of any generation (39%), narrowly beating Gen Z (38%).

Methodology

First, we used leading market research software Pollfish to survey 1,000 Americans ages 16–54+ on their gaming habits. We then divided the results by the following generations: Gen Z (16–24 years old), Millennials (25–44 years old), Gen X (45–54 years old), and Boomers (54+ years old).

We also compared How Long To Beat’s average completion time for six leading open-world games against the relative game time reported by our survey respondents. We collected our data in April 2022.