With more than 15 million unique daily viewers, the video game live streaming website Twitch.tv takes up its fair share of internet traffic. As of this writing, Amazon’s Alexa ranking listed it as the No. 26 website worldwide.  

Perhaps most famous on the internet at large for the “Twitch Plays Pokémon” crowdsourced video game phenomenon of 2014, Amazon-owned Twitch has proved its staying power since its 2011 launch. In a six-month CivicScience poll in early 2019 of more than 111,000 U.S. residents (ages 13+), more than a tenth of the country’s population said it uses Twitch. 

One might have preconceived notions of who the typical “gamer” is. (For instance, the company reports that more than 81% of its users are male.) Nevertheless, CivicScience took a deep dive into its database to discover some unexpected insights about this sizable subsection of the internet. 

ROSE-COLORED (VR) GLASSES:

Twitch users tended to be much more optimistic about their financial futures than those who said they don’t watch the site’s livestreams.

TWITCH IS DIVERSE:

Asian and Hispanic / Latino respondents were the groups most likely to say they use the site. 

TWITCH, ON THE DOUBLE:

In the CivicScience survey, current U.S. military members accounted for a whopping 12% of Twitch’s daily and weekly user base, and veterans added an additional 14%. For some perspective, consider that only 2% of the total U.S. adult population and 3% of U.S. adults ages 18 to 44 say they are active duty military in CivicScience’s ongoing polling. Perhaps military members and vets have found Twitch to be a good way to keep up with far-away friends and family during deployments.

TWITCH PLAYS … OPEN MIC NIGHT: 

Twitch users are 30% more likely than non-users to say that local music acts are at least somewhat important to them. They were nearly 40% more likely to say they want a “thriving” local music scene.

OUT OF THE BLUE:

And finally, in what feels like a scene from an episode of Black Mirror, Twitch users were 116% more likely than non-users to say that they would seriously date a robot.

 

Who knew?