When it comes to video streaming platforms on the Internet, YouTube dominated for a while, but TikTok came along.
TikTok has changed the game regarding vertical video content, and its success can be seen in TikTok’s network.
As a result, every major social network out there is racing to fill consumer demand for short-form video, otherwise known as swift, a scrollable video that meets the needs of the viewers.
The race for social media networks to incorporate this specific feature into their feature list is similar to the rush to incorporate a stories format in 2016 and 2017.
Both trends speak volumes of the power of social video and the future of video on mobile. As it stands, 75% of video plays worldwide are mobile devices.
Using short-form video as a medium lets marketers increase the visibility of their brand and improve their general video marketing strategy.
Let’s look at these key YouTube Shorts statistics to see how many people use YouTube Shorts.
Key Statistics
- Over 2.3 billion people use YouTube every month.
- YouTube Shorts receives 50 billion views daily.
- More than 70% of YouTube watch time is through mobile.
- More than 70% of YouTube Shorts are longer than 15 seconds.
- YouTube has a $100 million YouTube Shorts creator’s fund.
- YouTube Shorts can be used to gain long-form subscribers.
When Was YouTube Shorts Created?
In September of 2020, YouTube announced that it was offering a short-form video feature to compete with TikTok. This is called YouTube shorts.
YouTube released YouTube Shorts in India before rolling it out to America and 26 other countries by March 2021.
You can find this feature in the ‘shorts’ tab on the YouTube app through your mobile. They haven’t yet optimized the feature for desktop.
As the landscape of short-form video evolves and the competition continues to increase, it is hard to predict which platform will do better than everyone else.
Let’s take a look at some YouTube Shorts stats so that you can get a good idea of where this trend is heading in the future.
Detailed YouTube Shorts Statistics 2025
YouTube Has More than 2 Billion Active Users Every Month
YouTube is a top-rated video streaming platform, considering it is the second-most visited website globally and the second-most used search engine, barring Google.
As far as marketers are concerned, YouTube Shorts is a superb opportunity to communicate with their audience better because they don’t have to invest or commit to an often-expensive content strategy that involves long-form video.
This avoids having to sign into a new platform such as TikTok.
Instead, they can incorporate YouTube shorts into their marketing strategy and save quite a bit of money.
YouTube Shorts Gets 50 Billion Views Every Day Around the World
Towards the end of 2020, before YouTube decided to launch their YouTube shorts feature in America, daily viewership was sitting around 3.5 billion views.
In March 2021’s statistics, it shows that YouTube shorts had been released in America and 26 other countries, and as a result, the daily viewership doubled to 6.5 billion.
In July 2021, this feature became available in over 100 countries worldwide and surpassed the 15 billion benchmark for the average daily average.
In 2023, Google said that YouTube shorts has reached 50 billion daily views worldwide.
More than 70% of YouTube Watch Time Is on Mobile
If you are someone who watches the majority of your YouTube videos on your mobile phone, then you are certainly not alone.
We’re spending more time on our smartphones than ever before.
This is why the following statistic will come as no surprise. Over 70% of YouTube watch time happens on a mobile device.
YouTube stories were launched back in November 2017 and currently is only available to creators that have more than 10,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel.
This format lets users post 15-second clips that will disappear after seven days.
Compare this to YouTube shorts that don’t expire and can be used by all users, no matter how many subscribers they have.
More than 70% of YouTube Shorts Are Longer than 15 Seconds, but Have a 60 Second Time Limit
The time limit on YouTube shorts is 60 seconds, and many people make the most of this.
When YouTube shorts was released in 2020, the maximum time to film was 15 seconds.
However, shortly after they released YouTube shorts in America, they increased this length to be 60 seconds.
Stats show that people on YouTube are certainly making the most of the extra time.
72% of YouTube short users post videos that range between 16 seconds and 60 seconds long.
YouTube Has a $100 Million YouTube Shorts Fund to Encourage Creators
These days, creators have many options at their fingertips when it comes to posting their short-form videos.
They can do this on TikTok, Snapchat, or Instagram reels.
So, YouTube has to develop a way to make their features appealing in particular so that YouTube creators will want to post their short-form videos on the platform.
To do this, YouTube announced back in May 2021 a $100 million YouTube shorts fund that they would distribute between 2021 and 2022.
YouTube says they will choose from thousands of creators and pay them $100 and $10,000 a month to create YouTube shorts.
As a result, they have one of the most competitive creative funds in the industry.
In comparison, TikTok has an American creative fund of around $200 million, and Snapchat has promised to pay its creators $1,000,000 a day.
Instagram doesn’t currently have a creative fund, but we are sure that they will catch on at some point.
Creators Are Using Shorts to Gain Long-Form Subscribers on YouTube
With the introduction of the YouTube shorts feature, if someone subscribes to a creator’s shorts, they are also automatically subscribed to their long-form content.
It is much easier to encourage followers to interact with different types of content within the same app than it is to ask them to interact with different kinds of content on other apps.
For example, if a creator has a big following on TikTok, they might struggle to encourage this audience to go and check out their YouTube channel.
As the YouTube shorts feature is a section within YouTube, subscribers can interact with this short-form content as efficiently as possible with a creator’s long-form content.
This means that creators have an opportunity to leverage this short-form video content as anyone who subscribes to it is going to check out their long-form video content as well potentially.
It’s another opportunity for creators struggling to grow their long-form channels to create an audience around the videos they care about.
However, this has some disadvantages because views from YouTube shorts do count towards somebody’s total channel views, but short opinions don’t count towards YouTube’s partner program eligibility.
This means that if you get a lot of views on your YouTube shorts videos, this doesn’t necessarily imply that you are eligible for YouTube’s partner program, which might be a bit frustrating.
Creators Can Choose Sounds from Any YouTube Video so That They Can Remix Content for YouTube Shorts
YouTube is working on their YouTube shorts library, and they currently have more than 250 publishers and music labels on it.
They host a simple site link integration that lets you use the audio from any long-form or short-form video on YouTube.
Of course, privacy and ownership settings will prohibit you from using specific songs. Still, you can quickly figure this out because if you look beneath the video, you will see a ‘create’ button, which means that the video allows for remixes.
You can select the ‘create’ button to launch YouTube shorts creation tools so that you can start filming your content.
This is a pretty impressive feature, and it helps YouTube shorts stand out from competitors like Instagram reels and TikTok.
YouTube Shorts Is Working on Monetization Methods
As YouTube has announced its YouTube shorts fund, there are now ten different ways for creators to make money through YouTube.
The YouTube partner program, super chat, YouTube brand connect super stickers, merchandising, super thanks, events, channel memberships, and YouTube premium.
According to the $100 million shorts fund, YouTube has promised to work on a longer-term monetization model designed explicitly for shorts creators.
The Most Popular YouTube Shorts Video Has More than 400 Million Views
The most popular YouTube shorts video is a video by 5-minute crafts, where they make DIY soap in the shape of afoot.
It was posted on April the 11th, 2021, and is 30 seconds long.
It currently has more than 400 million views, 8 million likes, and 33,000 comments. In the first month alone, it received more than 230 million views.
General YouTube Statistics
Now that we have talked about YouTube shorts explained what it is and what you can expect to see from it in the next couple of years, let’s look at some general YouTube statistics.
Now you can understand what we are dealing with here regarding the platform in general.
YouTube Has More than 2 Billion Monthly Users
Although this statistic isn’t quite as good as Facebook, with 2.74 billion, 2 billion active monthly users are pretty impressive for a video streaming service.
The majority of the rest of the video streaming services out there pales in comparison to this number, so it is safe to say that YouTube is the most popular in the industry.
When it comes to specific numbers, you have to remember that it is possible to watch content on YouTube without actually creating an account.
That infers that millions more people are watching YouTube that doesn’t necessarily have an account, and that numbers can be much higher.
74% of Adults in America Use YouTube
Of course, there are some countries where YouTube is more popular than others, and America is an excellent example of this.
Interestingly, this statistic is more significant than Facebook’s, which sits at 68%.
When it comes to Instagram, merely 40% of American adults use the social media sharing app.
This means that YouTube is easily the most popular online platform in America right now. We predict that this number will get more prominent over the next couple of years.
77% of People Aged Between 15 and 35 Years Old in America Use YouTube
Of course, YouTube is a trendy platform in America among adults, but it’s also popular among the younger generations, arguably more so.
77% of people in America aged between 15 and 35 use YouTube. Interestingly, this statistic is that it is only slightly more than how many adults in America use YouTube shorts.
The most significant difference in YouTube usage in America is that more adults use YouTube than other social media network apps.
80% of American Parents of Children Under the Age of 11 Say Their Children Watch YouTube
TV was the big thing back in the day, but children tended to watch YouTube instead.
This is why 80% of American parents that have children under the age of 11 say that their children watch YouTube. 53% of these parents say that their children watch videos on YouTube at least once a day.
This is another interesting statistic when you look at other social networks out there because, for the most part, the minimum age requirement is 13.
YouTube and other video streaming sites have superseded TV, and we imagine that this trend will grow even more in the future.
94.5% of Ott Watchers in America Are Watching YouTube
OTT means over the top, and it means when somebody watches a streaming service on their TV.
The majority of Americans watch and stream videos on their TV through YouTube.
This means that they aren’t watching normal TV anymore; they opt for YouTube, even if they’re watching it through their TV.
YouTube is more prevalent in America than Netflix.
16.4% of YouTube’s Site Traffic Comes from America
We have already talked about how prevalent YouTube is in America, but what’s interesting about YouTube traffic statistics is that only a fraction of its general traffic every month comes from America.
Yes, America is the single most significant source of visitors for YouTube, but it only represents 16.4% of all traffic.
India’s second in line, at 9.2%, and then 4.8% for Japan.
56% of YouTuber Users Are Male
What’s interesting about people who use YouTube is that males dominate.
According to YouTube shorts data, 56% are male, while 44% are female.
Yes, there are still plenty of YouTube creators that are women out there, and there are also plenty of YouTube users that are women, but males dominate the scene when it comes to the popular video streaming platform.
YouTube Is the Second-Most Visited Website in The World
As we mentioned above, YouTube is the most popular website, right after Google.
40.9% of YouTube Watch Time Happens on Smartphones
As we mentioned earlier, smartphones are becoming more and more prevalent in our lives, including watching time on YouTube.
The majority of us now watch our YouTube videos through our smartphones because we can take them on the go with us and watch it from anywhere.
This is worth noting by marketers out there, who might want to optimize their YouTube videos from mobile and make sure that they can connect with their customer base through the smaller screen.
YouTube is still much loved on desktop, but the smartphone dominates right now.
Again, this number is probably underestimated, considering how many people will watch YouTube videos on their smartphone without having an account.
The Average Daily Visitor Checks out 8.89 Pages on YouTube
What’s interesting about YouTube is that people aren’t just coming in to watch a video or two and then leaving.
They’re sticking around for long enough to look at almost nine pages, increasing their viewing time and the number of different content sources they consume.
This is another statistic worth noting by marketers because it shows an excellent opportunity to reach their consumer base through YouTube.
Viewership of Videos with ‘beginner’ in The Title Increased 50% Between March and July 2020
It appears that people are turning to YouTube to learn new things.
Between March and July 2020, videos with the word ‘beginner’ in the title were viewed 50% more than previously.
Around the world, these videos got over 9 billion views in 2020. 66% of people in Germany used YouTube to start a new hobby in 2020, and an impressive 94% of people in India used YouTube to work out how to do things by themselves.
Around the world, coupled with statistics, 82% used YouTube to learn to do things by themselves.
So, you might be wondering, what are they learning to do?
The viewership of beauty tutorials increased by almost 50% in 2020, and there was a 90% increase in bike repair and maintenance videos.
Daily views of videos about raising chickens increased 160%, and videos related to learning the guitar received 160 million views between March and April.
Videos about container gardening received 6 million views in the same period, and there was an increase of 215% in daily uploads of videos related to self-love and self-care.
People Watched 100 Billion Hours of Gaming Through YouTube in 2020
While other popular gaming streaming sites like Twitch, YouTube still dominates the gaming scene.
As you can see from these statistics, there are a lot of avid gamers on YouTube, and there are a lot of gaming creators that have managed to build a pretty decent audience for themselves.
There are currently over 40 million active gaming channels on YouTube, and more than 80,000 of these channels have more than 100,000 subscribers.
The most-watched game on YouTube is Minecraft, and if you know anything about PewDiePie or Mr. Beast, you will understand that the gaming scene is trendy on YouTube. We don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon.
72% of People Used YouTube to Keep Fit or Exercise in 2020
Another thing that people did back in 2020 was an exercise at home through YouTube.
72% of people made the most of YouTube to stay healthy and exercise in 2020.
There was an increase of 515% in videos that included ‘home workout’ in the title in only a month of March.
People rely on YouTube for many different things these days, beyond looking at funny cat videos.
Final Thoughts
There is no doubt that YouTube is one of the most popular video streaming sites globally, and we don’t predict that it will lose its crown anytime soon.
We believe it will become more popular, particularly with its strategies currently putting in place, like YouTube shorts.
YouTube shorts are an excellent way for creators and marketers alike to connect more with their audience and find new ways to create video content that people want to interact with.
It’s a great way for creators to put out content that the audiences quickly grow to treasure, so they don’t have to spend hours every day filming and then editing videos.
With the surprising and impressive YouTube Shorts statistics above, we have a feeling that you probably spend a fair bit of your time viewing videos on YouTube and probably do it through your smartphone.
