Most families with kids have a gaming console

If a teenager lives in your house, there's an 83 per cent chance there is also a gaming console in your home, a survey of Canadians has found.

A majority (72 per cent) of homes with children under 12 and adults aged 18 to 34 (68 per cent) also have at least one gaming console, according to a telephone survey of 4,001 anglophones across Canada last fall by Forum Research Inc. on behalf of CBC's Media Technology Monitor. The results are considered accurate within +/- 1.5 percentage points.

Overall, the rate of console ownership in Canada is 45 per cent.

The most popular consoles in Canada are the:

• Wii (owned by 27 per cent of Canadians).
• Xbox 360 (20 per cent).
• PlayStation 3 (18 per cent).
• About 15 per cent of Canadians own more than one console.

While gaming consoles have been heavily marketed as media centres for their internet connectivity and their ability to stream video to a TV, only a minority of gaming console owners use them that way.

Most game consoles (60 per cent) are connected to the internet, but only half of those with connected consoles have actually used the internet on the devices, representing 31 per cent of console owners and 14 per cent of Canadians.

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The most popular internet activities on a gaming console are playing online games, which was done by 21 per cent of console owners, followed by streaming internet video, done by 18 per cent of console owners. More than 70 per cent of the video streaming involved watching Netflix.