According to the latest comprehensive data released by analytics firm Digital i in their June 2026 report, “The YouTube Era: 2025 in Review,” YouTube has officially surpassed streaming titan Netflix in average daily viewing minutes per user globally.
This milestone marks a critical pivot in audience behavior: YouTube is no longer just a repository for short-form, mobile-first videos. Instead, it has transformed into the primary entertainment service of choice in the modern living room.
Below, we break down the exclusive data, regional hyper-growth markets, changing demographic drivers, and the distinct mechanics behind YouTube’s victory over traditional Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) business models.
The Headline Metric: YouTube Outpaces Netflix Daily Usage
For years, Netflix held the crown as the ultimate attention-grabber in the streaming ecosystem. However, tracking data across 18 major global markets (including the U.S., UK, Germany, France, South Korea, and Japan) reveals that consumer habits completely inverted over the 2024–2025 period.
While Netflix’s daily average dropped by roughly 7 minutes per user, YouTube experienced an explosive climb, rising from 87.2 minutes to 99.1 minutes per day. This surge establishes YouTube as an inescapable anchor of daily media consumption.
From Smartphones to Smart TVs: The Big Screen Takeover
The core catalyst behind YouTube’s dominance is its aggressive expansion into TV sets. Audiences are shifting away from small-screen mobile clips to immerse themselves in content via connected television devices (CTVs).
- Sustained TV Growth: YouTube’s share of total viewing time on TV sets grew quarter-on-quarter from 28.2% in Q1 2024 to 33.7% by Q4 2025.
- The Long-Form Boom: Habits have turned distinctly toward “immersive” sessions. Viewing time dedicated to long-form content (videos longer than 20 minutes) steadily rose from 63.6% in January 2024 to 67.7% in December 2025.
Concurrently, mobile devices saw a continuous decline in their share of total viewing hours, proving that YouTube is successfully cloning the traditional lean-back TV experience.
Demographics: Silver-Haired Men and Gen Z Women Fueling the Growth
The expansion of YouTube’s audience is not uniform; instead, it is being propelled by precise demographic segments, notably older males and younger females.
- The 55-64 Boom: The single largest year-over-year volume increase across all age groups occurred in the 55–64 demographic, jumping by 11.1 minutes to reach 81.4 daily minutes in 2025. Looking deeper into gender metrics, male users aged 55-64 marked a staggering 15.3% growth in daily consumption.
- Gen Z Female Surge: Female users aged 18–24 recorded a stellar 14.5% year-over-year growth rate in average daily usage, solidifying their status as the most active demographic sub-segment on the platform.
- The Peak Consumers: Overall, the 18–24 age bracket remains YouTube’s crown jewel, dominating the chart by watching an average of 111.0 minutes per day in 2025.
Regional Spotlight: South Korea Leads, Europe Accelerates
Geographically, YouTube usage behaves like two different beasts depending on the continent.
- The Powerhouses: South Koreans are far and away the world’s most voracious YouTube consumers, averaging 161.5 minutes daily, more than triple the engagement of the lowest-ranked market, Italy, which sits at just 50.5 minutes.
- The Hyper-Growth Hyperlinks: European markets are rapidly transforming. France led global expansion with a massive 33.6% YoY explosion in daily viewing (surging from 57 minutes in 2024 to 77 minutes in 2025). Spain followed closely with a 31.9% increase, climbing to 58 daily minutes.
- The Mature Market: Conversely, the United States represents a mature market. While it boasts a high baseline of 111.6 minutes, it achieved the smallest annual growth at just 3.8%.
Hit-Driven SVOD vs. Ultra-Personalized Long Tail
The report sheds light on a fundamental structural divergence in how streaming hours are distributed between legacy SVOD giants and the open-ecosystem of YouTube.
- Netflix’s Concentration: Netflix concentrates its viewer attention around multi-million dollar marquee global hits. Remarkably, 32% of total viewing time on Netflix is generated solely by its Top 100 titles.
- YouTube’s Fragmentation: YouTube thrives on highly personalized content customized for niche sub-cultures. Its Top 100 channels generate a mere 6% of its overall viewing time (excluding Shorts).
This means that while Netflix depends on a highly concentrated system of tentpole releases, YouTube’s decentralized algorithm yields extraordinary depths of individual engagement distributed among hundreds of thousands of independent creators.
Hollywood’s Double-Edged Sword: The Reach Code
Interestingly, legacy entertainment empires aren’t just competing with YouTube, they are utilizing it as an indispensable marketing funnel. Traditional Hollywood studios have cracked the code of using YouTube to drive brand awareness.
In 2025, Netflix’s main brand channel achieved the highest reach among all media channels globally, interacting with 78.2 million subscriber accounts.
The market dominance on YouTube is heavily consolidated among five U.S. giants: NBCUniversal, Netflix, Amazon, The Walt Disney Company, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Collectively, these entities control the entire top 10 list of 2025’s highest-reaching traditional media channels. NBCUniversal leads the pack, holding 4 out of the top 10 positions.
The Catch: High Reach ≠ High Super-User Loyalty
However, U.S. data reveals a stark warning for legacy media. While mainstream corporate channels capture the “casual click,” they struggle to secure deep engagement.
For example, though Netflix’s YouTube channel captured 31.6 million U.S. accounts, it generated a measly 0.4 average hours per account per year. Meanwhile, specialized, niche digital-native channels generated immense super-user devotion:
- Asmongold TV (Gaming): Garnered 245.8 million hours viewed, averaging an astonishing 40.4 hours per account.
- Ms Rachel (Education): Nabbed 212.2 million hours viewed, commanding 42.2 average hours per account.
- CoryxKenshin (Gaming): Secured 209.7 million hours viewed, resulting in 42.0 average hours per account.
Creator Playbook: The Ecosystem Synergy of Shorts and Standard Videos
For content strategists looking to tap into this paradigm shift, Digital i’s analysis of the Top 500 channels highlights that a singular content approach is dead.
While long-form videos drive the raw viewing hours, YouTube Shorts act as the ultimate engine for user discovery and initial reach. Over half (53.8%) of the world’s top-performing channels are now classified as “heavily reliant on Shorts” to sustain their scale.
The winning blueprint for 2026 and beyond is a hybrid, balanced framework: utilizing Shorts to capture algorithmic reach and seamlessly funnelling those viewers into standard, long-form content to monetize deep, living-room engagement.
