Netflix may be falling behind as teens devote more screen time to YouTube, according to new findings from a national study by Piper Jaffrey.
YouTube claimed the top spot over Netflix this year in the semi-annual study, which analyzed the video-streaming habits of 9,500 American teens across a variety of platforms including YouTube, Netflix and cable. According to Yahoo Finance, the study found that 37 percent of teens reported doing the majority of their video streaming on YouTube, compared to 35 percent who said the same about Netflix.
Netflix had previously held the dominant share at 37 percent, while YouTube was the top destination for just 32 percent of teen streamers.
YouTube’s leap in popularity over Netflix could simply be a product of the former platform’s more diverse range of content. “We believe YouTube’s more varied content library is a significant driver,” the researchers wrote. “While YouTube does offer movies and other scripted content for a fee, the YouTube library includes music videos, video game streaming, DIY guides, social media influencer videos and other crowd sourced content.”
YouTube’s most popular channels include Bollywood channel T-Series, PewDiePie and CoCoMelon, Yahoo reported.
Despite YouTube’s rise in popularity over Netflix, the researchers said that Netflix “continues to maintain strong teen mind share,” adding that YouTube’s slightly higher traffic among teens can be attributed to “core differences between the content” available from the two platforms.
The researchers also noted that Netflix will likely see increasing competition as new subscription services like Disney+ and Apple TV+ enter the streaming space.
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