Young adult appetite for TV drops in UK

TV viewing time among people aged 16 to 24 dropped 7% year-on-year in 2015, though television still remains “by far the most popular form of video” for this age group, according to Thinkbox.

The marketing body for commercial TV in the UK said that 16-24s watched an average of two hours, 24 minutes a day of TV in 2015 – just ten minutes of which was watched on devices other than the TV.

However, TV now only accounts for 57.5% of people in this age group’s total video viewing time, which averaged out at three hours and 25 minutes per day, according to the research.

Those aged 16-24 also watched more than twice as much broadcaster VOD, YouTube and SVOD content compared to the average UK TV viewer.

“Younger people are spending more time watching TV and other forms of video online thanks to screens like tablets and smartphones; 38% of 16-24s’ video viewing is on devices compared with 20% for all individuals,” said Thinkbox.

Overall, the average TV viewer in the UK watched a total of three hours, 51 minutes of TV a day in 2015, 1% less than in 2014 but 5% more than in 2005, said the research.

YouTube has grown as a proportion of total video in the last year, accounting for 4.4% in 2015 compared to 3.5% in 2014. Viewing of subscription video-on-demand services like Netflix and Amazon Prime also grew to 4% of total video in 2015, up from 2.3% in 2014.

“These new figures show that TV dominates the video world for all age groups,” said Thinkbox CEO Lindsey Clay.

“Today’s young people watch on-demand forms of video more than the generations before that didn’t grow up with them. This makes sense as they do not tend to have control of the TV set and so turn to their personal screens to watch what they want.

“What is remarkable is that in the last decade, when so many new technologies and services have arrived that could have disrupted TV, TVviewing has remained so dominant.”