YouTube's audience is aging. The share of over-65s is growing very rapidly, and the number of viewers in this age group has doubled in two years. Younger viewers are the least enthusiastic about the platform.
YouTube is in good shape. Google's video streaming platform achieved its best monthly audience performance ever in February 2025, according to a report by Nielsen analysts. This good performance allows it to take the lead, with a good lead, in the ranking of media distributors.
Last month, YouTube achieved an 11.6% market share in this highly competitive US entertainment market. The service is ahead of Disney (Disney+ as well as the channels available on cable) and Fox. The latter took advantage of the Super Bowl to climb onto the podium for the first time, overtaking Netflix, Paramount, and NBCUniversal. Warner Bros+ Discovery and Amazon are a little further behind.
YouTube is becoming less and less of a medium for young people
"YouTube usage has been steadily increasing for some time. A longer-term look at the platform's growth shows that the time spent watching YouTube on TV has increased by 53% compared to two years ago, as of February 2023, and its share of TV has increased from 7.9% to 11.6% during this period,” explains Nielsen.
This increase in popularity is partly due to a growing enthusiasm for the platform among older people. “The audience of adults aged 65 and over has almost doubled in the last two years (+96%)”, the study highlights. Representing 15.4% of the audience, those over 65 are now significantly more numerous than those aged 12-17 (6.9%) and almost as many as those aged 2-11 (16.9%).
The majority of the audience is made up of 18-34 year olds (21%), but those aged 35-49 (19.4%) and 50-64 (20.4%) are not far behind. Above all, the increase in viewing among these age groups (between 48 and 62%) is greater than that of younger audiences (between 32 and 35%). We should therefore expect the share of older YouTube users to continue growing, while younger users prefer to go to TikTok or paid SVOD platforms.
Source: Nielsen
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