Watching TV is favorite after-school kids activity.

Watching television is the favorite after-school activity among kids ages 6-11, while playing video games comes in second for boys—ahead of playing sports, according to data from Mediamark Research Inc.

Asked to pick their favorite after-school activity or hobby, 65.3% of respondents cited watching TV, compared to 47.4% who chose hanging out with friends, 45.8% who chose playing video games and 45.8% who chose playing sports.

When looking at boys’ versus girls’ answers, however, a different picture of how children prefer to spend their after-school hours emerges.

The second most chosen “favorite” activity for boys’ is playing video games (62.7%). Other top choices for boys are playing sports (54.2%) and playing with toys (41.2%).

Girls’ answers, on the other hand, rank hanging out with friends as their second choice (47.5%). Other top choices for girls are playing with toys (42.9%) and doing homework (40.5%).

“The data from the 2006 American Kids Study show what most parents and marketers know—boys and girls often gravitate to different pursuits,” said Anne Marie Kelly, Vice President of Marketing and Strategic Planning at MRI. “The really interesting news here is that, for many boys, playing video games has surpassed participating in sports as a preferred outlet for their free time.”

The difference in boys’ and girls’ affinity for pastime pursuits is also apparent in the types of video games each gender is likely to play. While a large percentage of both boys and girls played a video/online/computer game in the last month (88.5% and 77.7% respectively), boys are more likely to play action games — including action/adventure, sports or war genres — while more girls gravitate towards cerebral games –such as educational, board/card games or strategy genres.

For instance, although action/adventure is the top genre for both girls and boys (65.2% of boys vs. 40.5% of girls played games in this genre in the last month), boys are 61% more likely than girls to have played a game of this type. Girls, on the other hand, are 58% more likely than boys to have played puzzle/strategy video game. In some cases, differences are dramatic. For example, 15.4% of all kids played a war game, yet boys were four times more likely (429%) than girls to have played this type of game.

Approximately 5,300 children responded to the study, questionnaires for which were sent to households with children ages 6-11 that were interviewed for MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer.