Here is an interesting factoid for everyone: Over 3 billion videos are viewed every day on YouTube. In other words, approximately 34,722.22 videos are viewed on the site every second. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released a report that studies video site use and data. The project is one of seven that are part of the Pew Research Center, a "fact tank" that studies American lifestyles. Researchers found that 71 percent of adults use video-sharing sites like YouTube. This is a five percent increase from a year ago, and a 38 percent increase from five years ago. A chart of the demographics is included below:
Geographic location seems to have no effect on video viewing. All of the location types are within four percentage points of each other. In addition, college gradates and individuals with some college education view videos at the rate of 75 percent. On the other hand, high school graduates video videos at a rate of 63 percent. Pew notes that there is a surprising fact: non-Caucasians view videos less than African Americans or Hispanics. Hispanics view videos at the rate of 81 percent, while African Americans view videos at the slightly lower rate of 76 percent. Caucasians, however, have a rate of 69 percent in regards to viewing videos.
Pew says that all of this is due in part to the fact that so much content is uploaded to sites such as YouTube. In fact, according to statistics, 48 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. This means that it would take an individual almost 8 years to watch the content that was uploaded today. Pew is basically saying that we watch because the content is there.