5 Interesting Facts About YouTube’s Users
If you’re online, chances are you have watched or are going to watch a YouTube video today, preferably one in 4K HDR TBH. Barring that, you might use another video hosting or live streaming service. The content on these services is for many of us no different than the essential TV shows and movies we watch every week. User-generated content is one of the main innovations of the internet, and whether YouTube remains the focal point for it or not, the cultural shift the site has brought about is permanent. truly a life changing acquisition by Google.
And while YouTube itself is a gold mine for anyone interested in facts and statistics, we thought that this time we would turn the camera around a bit and focus on what the numbers can say about its users and their habits, and perhaps get you to think about your own usage.
1) Users Often Switch Videos Very Quickly
Say what you might about short attention spans, but people most likely aren’t going to waste their time with poor or rambling content on YouTube. This is exemplified by the fact that 20 percent of videos have a bounce time of less than 10 seconds. Often people find a better-looking option in the sidebar, weren’t interested in the video in the first place, or simply don’t get a good first impression. If you end up SMH right away, then you bounce, IKR. And when there’s 20 other videos with the same title to look at, people become more discerning.
2) YouTube, as a Search Engine, is Beaten Only by Google
Any other search engine on earth, even dedicated ones such as Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and others, are unable to keep up with the sheer amount of traffic YouTube brings in and the amount of content that is available just on the platform.
Users are having to increasingly rely on this internal search engine to find content that they want, and many content creators are struggling to keep up with the algorithm. This also shows that people are coming to YouTube often not just for entertainment but as a major source of news, solutions to their problems, and more like live sports such as baseball and basketball such as a game between the Houston Rockets and Celtics. It is becoming a part of people’s lifestyles and general habits.
3) There Are 57,000 years and Counting of Content on YouTube
YouTube’s users are just people who watch videos, they are the people and organizations that make videos as well. As more people get cameras and think to upload content themselves, more content is created than any person will be able to watch, and on the opposite side, people are going to become more selective about which channels they subscribe to and what they watch.
Unless YouTube somehow makes it more difficult to upload content or starts culling content outside of what they do now (which is mostly just items that infringe on rights or is otherwise illegal), then it will only continue to grow without a true competitor.
4) 45 Percent of People Who Use YouTube Use it Daily
It’s difficult to beat those user retention numbers, and given the fact that there are two billion users that use YouTube at least once a month, the numbers show that hundreds of millions of people use the service each day, and that number will likely reach one billion within the coming few years. People can’t get enough of it, and with notifications, subscription lists, and other innovations on the part of the platform to keep people hooked, there’s always a reason to come back each day.
5) 81 percent of people in the United States Ages 15-25 use YouTube
And it should be noted that these numbers include people who might otherwise be isolated from technology, live extremely busy lives, or might have an internet connection too slow to really enjoy YouTube to its fullest potential. It’s a universal platform, there’s something for everyone, and young people understand this. Some even use it to live vicariously through celebrity lives like Billie Eilish, Post Malone, Lady Gaga, or Pink.
Conclusion
As you can probably guess, there’s more about YouTube that’s going on with both the front and back end than we can possibly talk about in the course of this article. And while you might want to consider what we can make about the average YouTube user outside of perhaps their youth, the key takeaway is that its hard to determine one for the simple fact that there are just so many of them, probably including yourself. For those still interested, we can only wait and see how culture as a whole and the platform shifts to determine the future of YouTube.
