Young Men Are Gaming More. Are They Working Less?
The pandemic accelerated a trend that had been blamed for decreasing their labor force participation.
Among men ages 15 to 24 who spent at least some time playing games on an average day in 2022, the average time spent was 3.82 hours.
Photographer: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images
During the first decade and a half of this century, young American men devoted a growing amount of time to computer and video games and a shrinking amount to work. In a 2017 paper that received tons of attention, four economists proposed that better games (“improved leisure technology”) were luring young men away from the workplace. In a response that received less attention but that I found more convincing, economist Gray Kimbrough argued that the interaction between weak labor demand and “a shift in social norms (that) rendered playing video games more acceptable at later ages” explained the data better.
It may be time for some new hypotheses. Statistics released last month by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics from the annual American Time Use Survey show that the time young men spent “playing games” — the survey doesn’t differentiate between electronic and non-electronic games, but most researchers assume it’s chiefly the former — rose by nearly three-quarters of an hour from 2019 to 2022, more than it had increased over the previous 16 years.