Online video is now a mainstream storytelling environment, not a niche format. In 2024, 92% of working-age internet users worldwide said they had watched an online video in the previous week, while 5.35 billion people used the internet globally. In the United States, 85% of adults said they ever use YouTube in 2025. These figures show both the scale of the audience and the breadth of the opportunity: people use video for entertainment, news, learning, social participation and live experiences.
Contents
- Global online video use
- Audience reach in the United States
- How people use video for news, learning and entertainment
- The United Kingdom’s platform landscape
- Children, teens and livestreaming
- Advertising, business and the television screen
Global online video use
The worldwide audience is large enough to make online video a core part of everyday media behavior. DataReportal reported that 5.35 billion people were using the internet in 2024, equal to 66.2% of the world’s population. During 2023, 97 million people came online for the first time, increasing global internet users by 1.8%. These are measures of internet access rather than video viewing, but they define the expanding population that can encounter digital stories.
Among working-age internet users worldwide, 92% said they had watched an online video in the past week in 2024, according to DataReportal’s What the world does online in 2024. More than six in ten also said they had watched an online video during that period in the same research. The two supplied figures describe a very broad weekly habit; the more precise 92% figure indicates that online video is close to universal among this measured group.
Music videos were the most popular type of online audio-visual content worldwide in 2024. Video therefore serves both as a destination for finished performances and as a format for other kinds of narrative. DataReportal also found that 43.4% of the world’s working-age internet users relied on online video as a source of learning in its Online Video Trends in 2023 report. That combination matters for cross-media storytellers: the same connected audience may arrive for a song, stay for a creator’s explanation, and use video to learn.
Time availability is another useful context. Internet users spent an average of more than 6.5 hours online each day at the start of 2024, according to DataReportal. That daily time represented roughly 40% of people’s waking lives. The statistic covers all internet activity, not video alone, so it should not be read as a video watch-time estimate. It does, however, show the size of the digital environment in which online video competes for attention.
Audience reach in the United States
YouTube has especially broad reach in the United States. Pew Research Center reported in 2025 that 85% of U.S. adults said they ever use YouTube. More than nine-in-ten U.S. adults under 50 used it, compared with 86% of adults ages 50 to 64 and 65% of adults ages 65 and older. The age pattern is substantial: YouTube use extends across generations, while remaining most widespread among younger adults.
Younger audiences also show high frequency. Pew reported that 90% of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 ever use YouTube. Seventy-three percent go on YouTube daily, and 15% say they use it almost constantly. “Ever use,” “daily” and “almost constantly” measure different levels of engagement, so they should not be combined into a single audience total. Together, they show a platform that can support both occasional discovery and habitual participation.
The earlier history of online video helps put those figures in perspective. In 2007, 57% of U.S. adult internet users had used the internet to watch or download video, and 19% watched or downloaded online video on a typical day, according to Pew Research Center. Among internet users ages 18 to 29, 76% reported online video consumption, while 31% watched or downloaded video on a typical day.
Pew’s 2013 research recorded 78% of online adults watching or downloading videos in some form. In that year, 72% of adult internet users watched videos on a video-sharing site such as YouTube or Vimeo, 56% watched videos online through social network sites or mobile apps, and 36% downloaded video files to a computer or cell phone. The measures cover different behaviors and should be kept distinct.
| Measure | Earlier Pew Research Center figure | Measurement period |
|---|---|---|
| Adult internet users watching or downloading video | 57% | 2007 |
| Online adults watching or downloading video in some form | 78% | 2013 |
| Adult internet users using video-sharing sites | 72% | 2013 |
| U.S. adults ever using YouTube | 85% | 2025 |
| U.S. teens ever using YouTube | 90% | 2025 |
The historical figures are reported measures from their respective Pew studies, not a single continuous survey series. Pew’s 2013 material also stated that the share of online adults using video-sharing sites rose from 33% in 2006 to 72% in 2013, while the share watching or downloading video rose from 69% in 2009 to 78% in 2013. Those legacy measures describe the growth of online video behavior during that period; they were not independently rechecked here.
How people use video for news, learning and entertainment
Online video is part of the news ecosystem as well as the entertainment ecosystem. Pew Research Center reported in 2025 that the share of Americans who get news on YouTube rose from 23% in 2020 to 32% in 2024. In 2024, 32% of U.S. adults got news from YouTube and 33% got news from Facebook, making the platforms roughly tied on this measure.
The YouTube news audience was 57% men and 42% women, according to the same Pew research. These percentages describe the gender composition of U.S. adults who get news on YouTube, rather than the share of all men or all women who use the platform for news. Pew also reported that 24% of adult YouTube users in the United States regularly get news from news influencers on social media.
Learning is another significant use case. DataReportal’s 2023 online-video research found that 43.4% of the world’s working-age internet users said they relied on online video as a source of learning. In the United Kingdom, Ofcom’s Children and parents: media use and attitudes 2025 found that 48% of children ages 3 to 17 watched videos via video-sharing platforms to help them learn new things or do schoolwork.
The UK child figures also identify entertainment patterns. Among UK children ages 3 to 17 who watch videos on apps or sites, 68% watched funny videos, pranks or challenges, while 56% watched cartoons, animations, mini-movies or songs. Separately, 50% of UK children ages 3 to 17 watched music videos via video-sharing platforms. These categories can overlap, so they describe types of viewing rather than mutually exclusive audience segments.
Early social behavior around video was already visible in Pew’s 2007 research. Seventy-three percent of online video viewers ages 18 to 29 had watched with other people such as friends or family, and 67% of video viewers in that age group had sent others links to videos they found online. The figures point to video as a shared and circulated media form, not only an individual screen activity.
The United Kingdom’s platform landscape
Ofcom reported in Adults’ media use and attitudes 2024 that 91% of adult internet users in the UK watched videos or clips online through a video-sharing platform. YouTube reached 78% of UK adult internet users, followed by Facebook at 47%, Instagram at 43%, TikTok at 37% and Snapchat at 19%. Snapchat’s 2024 figure was down from 22% in 2022.
The platform mix varies by gender for YouTube: 83% of male UK internet users watched videos on YouTube, compared with 74% of female users. These figures are shares within the respective groups, not the gender composition of the YouTube audience.
Live video adds another layer to the UK picture. Sixty-three percent of UK internet users watched content on any live-streaming platform, according to Ofcom. Among users ages 16 to 24, the figure was 87%, compared with 30% of those over 64. The difference by age suggests that live formats are particularly important when reaching younger audiences, although the older audience is not absent.
Children, teens and livestreaming
Video-sharing platforms reach nearly all UK children in the Ofcom 2025 research. Ninety-nine percent of children ages 3 to 17 watched videos through video-sharing platforms, including 84% who used YouTube, 44% who used TikTok, 26% who watched videos on Instagram and 19% who watched on Facebook.
Social-media access shows a strong age gradient. Sixty-eight percent of UK children ages 3 to 17 used social media apps. Among children ages 3 to 12, 55% used at least one social media app or site, while 96% of teens ages 13 to 17 did so. Parents of 37% of UK children ages 3 to 5 reported that their child used at least one social media app.
Livestreaming is also a substantial part of children’s video use. Sixty-six percent of UK children ages 3 to 17 watched livestreamed videos in 2024, up from 58% in 2022. The age split was 82% among teens ages 13 to 17 and 58% among children ages 3 to 12.
YouTube Live was used by 48% of UK children ages 3 to 17 to watch livestreamed videos, up from 41% in 2023. TikTok Live reached 31%, Instagram Live 18% and Facebook Live 16%. These platform figures are separate measures and can overlap because a child may use more than one live service.
Advertising, business and the television screen
DataReportal estimated that 239.0 million people in the United States were reachable by YouTube ads in early 2024. That potential advertising reach equaled 70.1% of the total U.S. population and 72.2% of the U.S. internet user base in January 2024. YouTube’s U.S. ad audience was 51.2% female and 48.8% male at the start of 2024.
DataReportal also reported that YouTube’s potential U.S. ad reach fell by 7.0 million people, or 2.8%, between the start of 2023 and early 2024. Ad reach is a platform estimate, not a count of unique viewers or a guarantee that every reachable person saw an advertisement. The distinction is important when translating audience scale into campaign expectations.
The commercial ecosystem is substantial. YouTube said in 2024 that YouTube Music and Premium had crossed 100 million subscribers including trials as of January 2024, with availability in more than 100 countries and regions. YouTube’s 2024 impact report said it paid more than $70 billion to creators, artists and media companies between 2021 and 2023. Alphabet investor relations reported that YouTube’s annual revenues surpassed $60 billion across ads and subscriptions.
Alphabet’s 2024 Annual Report recorded $36.147 billion in YouTube advertising revenue in 2024, compared with $31.510 billion in 2023. The same report described an increase of $4.6 billion from 2023 to 2024. Alphabet also reported $125.3 billion in operating cash flow in 2024; that is a company-wide figure, not YouTube revenue.
Online video is also crossing into the television environment. Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge, July 2024 reported that YouTube accounted for 10.4% of total TV viewing in July 2024, up from 9.9% in June, while time spent watching YouTube on TV rose 7% in July versus June. July 2024 was the first time a streaming platform led monthly TV usage in Nielsen’s gauge.
For January through July 2024, YouTube represented 9.6% of TV viewing year to date. Disney led the year-to-date tally with 11.0%, followed by NBCUniversal with 9.1%. These measures concern television viewing distribution, not all online viewing on every device.
Nielsen’s Streaming Unwrapped 2024 illustrates the scale of individual streaming stories. Bluey logged 55.62 billion viewing minutes on Disney+, Grey’s Anatomy logged 47.85 billion minutes across Hulu and Netflix, Bridgerton logged 21.42 billion minutes, Love Is Blind logged 16.45 billion minutes, and The Boys logged 13.6 billion minutes. The titles span different services and genres, but each shows how a story can accumulate attention at a scale measured in billions of minutes.