NPD looks into kids and gaming

As much as the gaming industry tries to present itself as an entertainment realm for adults as well as children, there's no denying that a lot of kids play games. In fact, the industry-tracking NPD Group announced today that its latest report found that the amount of time kids spend playing games is on the rise across the board.

Of the nearly 3,500 children between the ages of 2 and 17 that the NPD surveyed, one-third responded that they are spending more time playing games than they did a year ago. As of press time, an NPD representative had not returned GameSpot's request for comment on how the habits of the remaining two-thirds had changed.

The report also found that PCs are the primary gaming platform for kids, with children starting to game on the system at age 6, and continuing through the age of 17, the longest stretch of time of any gaming system measured. According to the NPD, the "gaming lifecycle" begins with kid-focused systems.

As boys get older, they migrate to plug-and-play TV games, then previous-generation consoles and handhelds. At age 10, they move to cell-phone gaming and the current crop of systems from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. On the other hand, girls tend to leave gaming behind as they get older.

NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier said in a statement that the switch from casual to core gamer happens between the ages of 6 and 8, which suggests that this span of time is "a critical age at which to capture the future gamers of the world."

The most punctuated jump in time spent gaming occurs in the switch from the 2-to-5 age bracket to 6-to-8, according to the NPD. It is then that weekly gaming hours surge 75 percent on the average, from four hours a week to seven hours. By the time kids hit the 12-to-17 bracket, game use has generally evened out at roughly 10 hours a week.