Older adults love YouTube

According to Hootsuite’s The Social Media Consumer report, the average that Luz María Vázquez spends is similar to that of people aged 65 and over on the video platform: three hours and 20 minutes. But why does it attract so much attention?

For its part, eMarketer noted that almost half of Latin America’s population (or about 327.2 million people) are consumers of digital video content on their mobile phones this year. And of these, 21.7% consume this type of videos on YouTube Premium, making the platform the fourth most viewed after Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime, according to the report from the marketing analysis firm.

Luz María Vázquez watches content in this app for three reasons: “A niece helped me connect the television from my phone and I find it easier to search for videos on YouTube, and I have also found free travel and meditation content that often cost me more. “I work to find it in other apps, and finally I shared my Netflix account with my son but I no longer wanted to pay for the service when they stopped allowing him to watch the service on TV.”

Like this percentage indicated by eMarketer, Vázquez pays a premium subscription to be able to watch the videos without ads and because in some cases he can download the video to his smartphone.

“For the average person on the street, search engines and television are still front and center. Especially for older adults, who watch content on their living room screens,” Hootsuite noted in the 2023 Consumer Trends report.

Currently, the YouTube algorithm offers different recommendations to each user. These recommendations are based on users’ interests and viewing history and consider factors such as video performance and quality.

According to Hootsuite, what drives virality on the video platform is not just a matter of content. “Our algorithm does not pay attention to the videos; pay attention to the spectators. So instead of making videos that make the algorithm happy, focus on making videos that make your viewers happy,” YouTube explains.

This is why the interaction of older adults on the Google platform can be simpler, since the recommendations are more similar and coincide with what Luz María Vázquez says about finding content related to what they consume, in a simpler way than searching on a streaming platform.

Although there are more consumers, millennials love YouTube

The video platform has become relevant among older adults, however, figures from Statista indicate that until January 2024, around 12% of YouTube’s global audience was made up of men between 25 and 34 years old, while female users of said age represented a little more than 9% of the total. For their part, users over 64 years of age accounted for less than 5% of the total audience of the open video platform in both cases.