It didn’t seem like that long ago that everyone was banging on about MMORPGS (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games) and the attendant problems for society. Namely, that youth were addicted, losing contact with reality and periodically losing their [real] lives (for example, heart failure after an 80 hour marathon session on EverQuest 2) or taking someone else’s (someone was killed in real life over a ‘virtual’ dispute over a virtual sword – the mind boggles!).

Our findings take in gaming across platforms, both on and offline. And there’s nothing pathological about their playing. 54% of 19-25 year-olds do not play online at all, and of those that do 35% play for an average of 30 minutes. We also asked specifically about MMORPG type games like, for example, Second Life, and only about 5% of 19-25 year-olds ever play. So maybe South Korea, China and the like are having problems, but we think UK youth are safe for now. And just to confirm, offline gaming and mobile gaming is also pretty under control, with 57% playing offline, but for mostly for an average of 15 minutes a day; and 19% on playing on mobile devices for an average of 8 minutes.