Ageism

Age is not well represented in online video games and this can cause gamers to not understand how to deal with elderly people, or worse, have negative behaviors towards older people. Almost 60% of players who play video games are under 34 years of age and it drops to single digits above 55 years of age (Chang, 2022). Only 3.2% of characters are ages 50+, compared to older adults in family television (9.5%) and family films (7.6%), and far below the 34% of the US population who are 50+. Of lead characters, even fewer (0.8%) were ages 50+ (Geena Davis Institute, 2021). So if gamers don’t see lead characters online that are 50+ in age, then their real world prejudices and stereotypes kick in (e.g. old people are not strong, they are not fast or they are not able to adapt quickly to a situation). 

Citations:

Chang, Jenny, 2022. 172 Key Video Games Industry Statistics: 2022 Market Share Analysis & Data. Finances Online. https://financesonline.com/video-games-industry-statistics/

Geena Davis Institute, Oak Foundation, Promundo (2021) The Double-Edge Sword of Online Gaming. https://seejane.org/wp-content/uploads/gaming-study-2021-7.pdf