You would think that video-sharing sites like YouTube are more popular with teenagers looking for music videos and nonsense. But a new study reveals that at least 71 percent of adults are actively using these portals as well.
Pew Research published a new survey on Tuesday, with the finding that far more than half of adults over the age of 18 are using video-sharing sites like Vimeo and YouTube. As seen in the graph below, today’s overall estimate for adult Internet users is five percent higher than results from 2010 and 38 percent more than in 2006.
Parents, in particular, are the overwhelming majority of adults using video-sharing sites. After all, finding a clip of Sesame Street on YouTube is one quick and easy way to pacify a child.
Some 81% of parents in the survey reported visiting video-sharing sites, compared with 61% of the non-parents. Parental use increased nine points from 72% in May 2010, while non-parental use dipped slightly from the 63% reported in the same survey. This increase might also be attributable to the fact that parents with minors at home are younger as a group than the non-parents cohort and use of video-sharing sites is linked to younger users.
Pew attributes much of the surge in traffic to these pages during the last five years (and even the last year) to the “explosion of content on YouTube.”
The latest statistics from YouTube are that 48 hours of content are uploaded every minute to the site and the range of contributions is striking. YouTube lists 28 different categories for channels of video that are contributed and dozens of subcategories ranging from automobiles and gaming, to activism and politics.
That includes typical amateur home videos, but many entertainment networks have seen the value in making official, HD quality available on YouTube. While most major TV programming and episodes are stored over on Hulu and Netflix, YouTube sort of fits in as that place to go for movie trailers, behind-the-scenes clips, cast interviews and anything else you might find on a special features DVD disc.
How often do you visit video-sharing sites?
Via ZD Net
