Pew study finds 70 percent of college students play video games

by Chris Thuma – Horizon Editor-in-Chief

At night all around Hesston college campus students sit in their dorms and stay up late playing their beloved video games.  Mod E3WS is no exception: Seeing the third floor guys gather around a T.V. in Seth Davenport and Jordan Gray’s room to watch the two play FIFA 2011 is commonplace.

You can bet that students in other mods are doing the same thing, too. In fact, a recent study from Pew Internet Research found that 70 percent of college students play video games at least “once in a while.”

Sophomore Nick Yoder is one of them.

“I love to play Battlefield on my Xbox because it helps me relax from school and it gives me time to chill with my friends in third floor Erb,” he said.

And building relationships is a big part of video games, according to the study. Fifty-one percent of men believe that gaming improved their friendships, with 36 percent of women saying the same thing.

But there is some concern about how video games can affect students. About half of survey respondents said that gaming keeps them from studying “some” or “a lot.” Around 9 percent said that playing video games was a way to avoid studying altogether. On a related note, sometimes while they are doing their homework students will be multitasking. They either are playing video games or instant messaging, while writing their paper. And video games can also affect how much sleep students get. About 41 percent of all students surveyed said they play video games after 9 p.m. and some say they don’t go to bed until 3 a.m.