A large 82% of minors aged 2-17 in the United States, some 55 million, are gamers, reported from a news article from marketing research business firm The NPD Group.

The study discovers that gaming is most popular amongst ages of 9-11, a demographic that accounts for 12.4 million, and slightly less common between ages 2-5 at 9.7 million, with 51% of the sum "kid gamer" market playing games over the net.

In the meantime, the ages group 12-14 demographic spent the most time playing games at 10.6 hours per week, with guys aged 9-14 being "more inclined" to play games online. Along with females, teens between 15-17 were the two groupings "most likely" to report spending fewer time gaming and playing online this year against last year."

The decline in teen usage of video games is probably due to branching out, maturing interests, which translates into stiffer competition, tallying that the data indicates parent-imposed time restrictions, more school work, activities, and other forms of amusement perhaps contributing to this dip in older teenage engagement.

Since for what they're gaming on, the article titles that children utilize an average of 2.5 dedicated gaming systems or devices, with those between 9 and 12 using "roughly 3 system/devices on average." Nontraditional gaming devices, like mobile phones and portable media players, were more popular amidst the older groups.

Methodology The report is based on online survey responses from over 5,000 members of NPD's online consumer panel ages 2-17 (respondents age 2-12 were captured via surrogate reporting). Respondents had to report that they currently, personally play video games on a PC/Mac, video game system or device used for gaming. Final survey data was weighted to represent the U.S. population of individuals age 2-17. The survey data is weighted to represent the U.S. population of individuals ages 2 and older. Fieldwork was conducted from September 10-17, 2009.