Old People are Not Old Old People Anymore....

This study was based on digital games and older adults. By older adults, I am not talking about your average 30 year old but more like your parents and grandparents. The study aimed ages 45-85 years of age and 124 individuals participated. The results of the study came out that most older people play digital games for the challenge and social interaction coming is as a predictor for the time actually spent playing digital games. It was also found that the older crowd preferred solitary game or casual pc games. Societal implications would mean that all the games that are family friendly are actually being put to use. This brings me the gratification and uses theory. While children are using digital games because they are fun, older people are using video games to challenge themselves.  The social interaction with your children or grandchildren is also important in play. This social interaction also matters because this proves the theory that everyone communicates through mediums and through interpersonal communication. Even older people are resulting to interaction on computer instead of face to face interaction. Technology is truly changing every aspect of our lives regardless of what generation you are a part of. This would also imply that if older people like digital games then they are not being technology laggards and are becoming ore apart of the early majority, late majority crowd when adopting a new technology. This is very interesting to me because my grandparents can barely work a computer and send an email. What this means for technology is that basically it is constantly a growing field in audience. However though older people are playing video games, they are still reluctant to play games like Call of Duty and action games and are till sticking to the basics. I wonder what that will mean for the future of production of games. So video game companies will start creating games targeted just to the older crowds. This niche has yet to come forth but if more studies prove this, there will b a lot of money to be made. Another thing this could mean to society is that PC games are becoming more popular, and maybe ore should be created to cater to the older crowd. What the study does not say however is how much time is actually being spent by digital gamers on computers or devices. The average child spends about 7 hours so it does make me curious how much on average does someone old older age spends.

http://gac.sagepub.com/content/6/2/155.abstract