Cath Bowie logs on from Aberdeen, and 24,000 people come to watch her play Fortnite

In 2017 Cath Bowie walked into her grandson’s bedroom in Aberdeen and found him playing a new game called Fortnite. He was 17. She was, in her own words to Guinness World Records, “instantly intrigued”.

She opened her own account the following year. Then she decided to do what the young players did and broadcast her games live on Twitch, the website where people watch others play.

Her grandson did not think much of the plan.

“Saying that was like a red rag to a bull to me. I would show him that I could do it.” — Cath Bowie, to Guinness World Records

What he had said, by her account, was that nobody would join her or watch her. She now has more than 24,000 followers. Bowie turned 78 on 1 September, and on 24 September Guinness World Records announced her as the oldest female Fortnite streamer. She appears in its Gamer’s Edition 2027.

A goal for every game

Bowie broadcasts for hours at a time, Guinness said; ABC News put it at up to six hours a day. Her channel name was her granddaughter’s idea, a joke about a grumpy gran, since by her own account she does not grump.

She is not there for the trophies. Guinness noted that she does not concentrate on winning in the usual sense, but sets herself a goal for each game. She calls herself a “Fortniter” more than a gamer.

“I do it for me and to chat with my lovely supporters.” — Cath Bowie, to Guinness World Records

Those supporters are not who you might guess. About half of her followers are in the United States, she told NPR’s All Things Considered, with the rest largely in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Most of the people she plays alongside are between 30 and 50. The oldest of her regular friends in the game is a 64-year-old American.

Asked by NPR what she would say to someone hesitating, she kept it short.

“Do it. You know, honestly, just go and do it.” — Cath Bowie, to NPR

Why this matters

Two things are going on when Bowie logs on, and there is some evidence for both.

The first is the game. In 2015 neuroscientists at the University of California, Irvine, asked students who did not play video games to play for 30 minutes a day for two weeks. Those given a three-dimensional game, Super Mario 3D World, improved by about 12 per cent on a memory test that depends on the hippocampus, the part of the brain that forms new memories. Those given a flat, two-dimensional game did not improve. Professor Craig Stark said the gain “is the same amount it normally decreases between the ages of 45 and 70”.

The same team repeated the idea with older adults and published the results in the journal Behavioural Brain Research in 2020. Two weeks of play improved recognition memory, and the Super Mario players went on improving over a further two weeks and kept the gain after they stopped. These are small studies of particular games and one kind of memory. They do not show that gaming prevents dementia.

The second thing is the company. Bowie has built a circle of regulars on three continents by turning up at the same place, at predictable times, to do something she enjoys in front of other people. A walking group or a choir works the same way.

If you fancy a go

• Borrow before you buy. Several of the most-played games cost nothing to download. Ask a player in the family to sit beside you for the first half hour.
• Lock the account first. Use a password you use nowhere else and switch on two-step sign-in; our guide to passwords and two-factor shows how. Set voice chat to friends only at first.
• Decide what you will spend. Games that are free to start sell costumes and extras. Set a figure, including zero, before you begin.
• Keep private things private on a stream. No surname, address, or anything on screen or in shot that shows where you live.

For other ways to give your memory something new to chew on, see keeping your mind sharp.