The University of Michigan recently published the results of a study looking at young gamers. 1,491 students, aged 10 to 19 years old, from all across the United States, took part in this study. They were asked about how the spent their time.

A couple of conclusions were postulated from this study. One conclusion was fairly obvious: a far higher percentage of boys played video games (~%80), compared to girls (~%20). Other conclusions were a bit more interesting: for one thing, of the adolescents who said they enjoyed gaming, they on average spent %30 less time reading, and %34 less time working on homework, in comparison to their non-gamer peers. The study did not indicate whether or not the gamers did better or worse in school, on average, in comparison to the students who cruelly deprived themselves of all video games. Curiosly, it was the girl-gamers who (on average) who did less homework, while the guy-gamers (on average) did less reading.   

Another broad generalization that this study produced was that gamers -- most of them, anyways -- are just as social as non-gamers. The time spent hanging out friends and family was about the same between both groups. The study did not say anything about WoW addicted, immobile maniac-gamers, however.