PEW Internet: Gamers are Citizens, not Slackers

Despite home console gaming only being 30-odd years old, it's practically an old wives tale now that gamers are stoned-out slackers, glued to their Xbox, with little to no chance of hitting the polls on election day. Despite that bit of conventional wisdom, Rock the Vote got a lot of ink when it recently announced it was partnering with Microsoft to offer voter registration on Xbox Live.

The Bill O'Reilly's of the world probably gave a collective snort when they heard of the effort, but today, a new study by PEW Internet breaks down those old stereotypes and outlines why Rock the Vote has the right idea about gamers and our political process. According to the report, not only is gaming not an inhibitor of civic participation, frequent gamers were more likely than others to participate in a wide range of civic activities:

The quantity of game play is not strongly related (positively or negatively) to most indicators of teens’ interest and engagement in civic and political activity.

Analyses compared the civic and political attitudes and behavior of teens who play games every day or more, those who play games one to five times per week, and teens who play games less than once a week. For all eight indicators of civic and political engagement, there were no significant differences between teens who play games every day and teens who play less than once a week (after controlling for demographics and parents’ civic engagement). For six of the eight indicators, there were no significant differences between teens who play games one to five times a week and teens who play less than once a week. The exception was that 11% of teens who play games one to five times a week have protested in the last 12 months, compared with 5% of teens who play less than once a week, and 57% of teens who play games one to five times a week say they are interested in politics, compared with 49% of teens who play less than once a week.

There is a limit, to be sure. At some point, too much gaming gets in the way of participation in other activities, however this is only at the extreme end of the spectrum:

Within the group of teens who play games every day, time spent gaming varied from 15 minutes to several hours each day. The relationship between the number of hours teens played games the previous day and civic outcomes was statistically significant for two of the eight outcomes asked about. Teens who spend more hours playing games are slightly less likely to volunteer or to express a commitment to civic participation than those who play for fewer hours (see Table 2 in Appendix 2 for details).

The report also notes a correlation between "civic" gaming experiences and higher rates of participation. Civic gaming experiences are defined broadly:

• Helping or guiding other players.
• Playing games where one learns about a problem in society.
• Playing games that explore a social issue the player cares about.
• Playing a game where the player has to think about moral or ethical issues.
• Playing a game where the player helps make decisions about how a community, city or nation should be run.
• Organizing game groups or guilds.

The study found that teens with the most "civic gaming" experiences were also the most likely to be interested in politics and civically engaged:

--70% go online to get information about politics or current events, compared with 55% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--70% have raised money for charity in the past 12 months, compared with 51% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--69% are committed to civic participation, compared with 57% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--61% are interested in politics, compared with 41% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--60% stay informed about current events, compared with 49% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--34% have tried to persuade others to vote a particular way in an election, compared with 17% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.
--15% have participated in a protest, march, or demonstration, compared to 6% of those who have the least civic gaming experiences.

Of these "civic" experiences, I think by far the most interesting is that of participating in a gaming community - getting on message boards, creating your own walk-throughs, etc. These are genuine examples of a participatory culture enabled by technology, and they are also markers of higher civic participation within the gaming community.

Teens who take part in social interaction related to the game, such as commenting on websites or contributing to discussion boards, are more engaged civically and politically. Among teens who write or contribute to these game-related websites:
* 18% have protested in the last 12 months, compared to 8% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.
* 38% have tried to persuade others how to vote in an election, compared with 22% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.
* 68% have raised money for charity, compared with 61% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.
* 67% stay informed about current events, compared with 58% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.
* 63% are interested in politics, compared with 54% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.
* 74% are committed to civic participation, compared with 61% of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.

This is all to say that young gamers aren't slackers, they are in fact engaged citizens. Moreso even than some of their peers who are not gamers.

The kicker, to my mind, though, came in the final pages of the report:

Civic gaming opportunities appear to be more equitably distributed than high school civic learning opportunities.

The fact that civic gaming experiences are strongly related to many civic and political outcomes raised the question of how equitably they were distributed. Previous research has found that the high school civic learning opportunities that promote civic and political commitments and capacities tend to be unequally distributed with higher-income, higher-achieving, and white students experiencing many more opportunities than their counterparts.

This, however, was not the case for civic gaming opportunities. Only gender is related to whether teens have access to these opportunities. Overall, 81% of boys reported having average or frequent civic gaming experiences, compared to 71% of girls. Income, race, and age were all unrelated to the amount of civic gaming experiences reported by respondents (see Table 6 in Appendix 2 for details).

A CIRCLE working paper (pdf) found that high school civics education closely tracks with both voter participation rates and the racial and socio-economic status of voters. In short, richer, whiter neighborhoods have more and better civics education in high schools, and thus higher voter participation rates. Blacker, poorer schools are less likely to have such educational opportunities and suffer from lower turnout. We saw a version of this play out in the recent primaries in the huge disparity between college and non-college youth turnout.

The fact that formative civic experiences for low-income youth in American need to come from Xbox says a lot of really bad things about our schools and our political system. Yet is also reveals some opportunities to at least try to begin leveling the playing field.

Suddenly registering young people via Xbox Live doesn't just look like an innovative new idea, it looks like necessity.