“Cutting class to play video games”

Video games represent a class of new leisure activity that makes use of advances in information technology. These increasingly popular pastimes can crowd out time spent on other activities. I exploit week-to-week variation in video game popularity to identify variation in video game playing time likely due to changes in game quality rather than to individuals selecting into gaming. I find that when video game sales increase, students spend more time playing games, and less time attending class and doing homework. Differential effects for college students and those with lower incomes indicate large effects for these groups. Newly developing ICT based pastimes, such as use of online social media, could have similar effects.