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Most people think of gaming as a male hobby, but a new study highlighting the gaming habits of men and women shows that fellows aren’t the only ones who enjoy a good shoot ‘em up game or a rousing session of Angry Birds. 

The Daily Mail reports that men spend 22.3% of their time online playing games, while women dedicate 23.2% of their online time to gaming. However, the two sexes are drawn to games for different reasons. Women, it seems, enjoy playing online games because it helps them relieve stress. Two thirds of the ladies surveyed cited stress relief as the primary reason for picking up a controller or logging onto a gaming website. Guys, on the other, hand like video games because they provide an element of competition.

However, the most surprising element of the study was the finding that women prefer playing video games to shopping and sex! One in five females even reported regularly gaming in bed.

Naturally, this attraction to gaming and online distractions can have an unhealthy affect on a couple’s relationships.

“These days, people are on their mobiles at dinner; they spend hours on the computer or watching TV; and they are more connected to their Facebook friends than to the person they promised to love and cherish until death do them part,” relationship therapist Douglas Weiss told The Daily Mail. “Technology is interrupting our relationships and allowing us to avoid each other. It has become a way of avoiding real relationships and intimacy."

Doritos conducted the UK poll in conjunction with the launch of a new mobile app so you may want to take the results with a grain of salt. 

What do you think? Do you buy the results of the survey, especially the part about women preferring games to sex? Or do you think it’s a bunch of marketing hype?

Tags: online games, video games, online gaming, gaming, gaming and women
Categories: Stuff