YouTube UK Statistics 2023

Want to watch celebrities eat the hottest chilli sauce in the world? Fancy spending your day watching cat videos? Or need to see a review of the latest laptop?

There’s only one place to go: YouTube.

In our latest 2023 study, we take a look at the most important YouTube statistics in the UK.

With the rise of the tech giants, we often hear about the genius behind the innovations – Jobs and Apple, Bezos and Amazon, Zuckerberg and Facebook. These titans stand side by side with their creation. With YouTube, that’s less so. The site was originally the brainchild of three PayPal employees: Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim. Incredibly, YouTube is bigger than all the other social media platforms. The ubiquitous cinema for our lives.

YouTube, the site that sparked us to start our video production company in London, has now been with us for over fifteen years. The very first video was uploaded to YouTube way back on April 23^rd 2005. Imaginatively titled ‘Me at the zoo’, it features one of the founders… at the zoo. But the name and formula stuck. Instead of flashy studios and polished celebrities, it was you behind the camera. Within a decade the site had a billion users, being sold to Google for a remarkable $1.65 billion.

Here we’ll dive into the video monolith, discovering the state of YouTube today, both in the UK and worldwide. What demographic use YouTube the most? Who is the most popular YouTuber? Which country uses YouTube the most? And what is the longest video in the world?

It’s all here!

• YouTube is the second most popular social media site
• More than 35.6 million adults in the UK use the platform
• 35% of the UK population are an active user of YouTube
• 46% of women use YouTube in the UK vs 54% of men
• YouTube use is growing the fastest amongst Baby Boomers and Gen-X-ers
• The most active demographic are aged 25-44, accounting for 44% of all users
• The most popular YouTube channel in the UK was Ed Sheeran with 43 million subscribers. The channel also boasted around 18.78 billion views

Calculating the total number of YouTube videos is trickier than it looks. At present, no direct data exists telling us the exact number. But there are several estimates, and the numbers are unsurprisingly huge. By 2019 it was suggested there were 3.01 billion YouTube videos. That number is up from 1.3 billion in 2012.

The growth is simply staggering. At this rate, YouTube video growth is faster than human population growth. The entire population of China would need to watch three videos to view the extensive library.

Back in 2017, YouTube released a blog post disclosing that everyday users watched over a billion hours of video. That number surpasses comprehension. The post explained that it would take one person 100,000 years to watch the entire catalogue. Taking us back before humans migrated from Africa. If you travelled at the speed of light, you could travel from one edge of the Milky Way to the other. Start YouTube at one edge, and by the time you reach the end, it will have just finished.

Such stats should come as no surprise considering YouTube is the 2^nd most visited site globally, accounting for 37% of all mobile internet traffic. To sort through this vast catalogue of data, YouTube has become the second-largest search engine in the world, rivalled only by Google.

Watching the clock tick by, for every minute the hand moves, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded; per hour that works out at around 30,000 hours of content. That’s 720,000 per day; approximately 21.6 million hours per month or a monumental 262.8 million hours per year.

The website’s growth has sparked a remarkable appetite for new content. Between 2014 and 2019, the number of video content hours uploaded per minute increased by 40%. Part of this trend has been the move toward longer videos. In the early days, videos rarely exceeded seven or eight minutes. Since then, videos have increased in length with YouTube only inserting ads mid-video if it exceeds the 10-minute mark.

With 1.9 billion monthly active users, the video hosting platform pulls large numbers from all age demographics, accounting for almost one-third of the internet. An analysis of UK demographics found around 24% of users were aged between 16-24 years, with the highest share of users aged between 25-44 years, constituting 44%.

More recent figures from the US found, in age groups 15-25 and 26-35, 77% were YouTube users. However, the Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers constitute the fastest-growing user segment, with over 56 year-olds having a market reach of 67%.

YouTube users are a male majority in the UK, although the split is close to 50-50. Approximately 46% of users were found to be female, and 54% were male. These results mirror trends across the pond, where the split is even between both genders.

Topping the list is the home of YouTube itself: the United States. With 180.7 million active users in 2018, the country dominates the rankings. Taking the number two slot is Brazil, with 69.5 million users, and in third is Russia with 47.4 million users. The United Kingdom had 35.6 million users, with 35% of the population using YouTube – more than any other social media.

Baby videos aside, who holds the crown of youngest Youtuber? Back in 2015, Ryan at the channel Ryan ToysReview was only 5-years-old when the channel first started. Within a year the channel had grown to 5.5 million subscribers. Many more young YouTubers have toddled in his footsteps, including 3-year-old Maya and 6-year-old Hulyan at Hulyan Maya, with 1.4 million subscribers. Most of these channels focus on unboxing toys, dressing in costumes and having fun outdoors.

As of 2020, the richest YouTuber globally, with a net worth of $75 million is Jeffree Star. He is a model and fashion designer hailing from America. His videos involve make-up skills and tutorials. Like most super-wealthy YouTubers, Star’s wealth comes from product sales and promotional videos.

Next up, in number two, is Daniel Middleton worth $45 million. His channel, Diamond Minecart, is a gaming channel focusing on Minecraft, with sponsorship deals bringing him a sizable fortune. Finally, in third place is Logan Paul, worth $40 million. With several television appearances under his belt, Logan Paul has become one of the most famous names on the platform.

Following PewDiePie’s long reign as the King of YouTube, the Swedish comedian was supplanted by T-Series, the famous Indian music channel. With more than 167 million subscribers, the channel is genuinely record-breaking. Beginning in 2006, the company behind the channel has been running since the 1980s.

YouTube Movies has 130 million subscribers. However, being a part of the platform itself, many don’t consider this a contender.

In fourth place and the most popular single YouTuber is PewDiePie, otherwise known as Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg. Felix is best known for Let’s Play videos and other gaming-related content.

The first YouTuber was Jawed Karim – one of the creators of YouTube – with his 18-second trip to the zoo video. Following him was jonesucarrie, then Hurlex and greg. These were the first four people ever to use the platform. Interestingly, the most popular YouTuber, PewDiePIe, wouldn’t join until five years after the platform’s creation.

At the end of 2018, YouTube produced a rewind of the prior year – a look back on the significant events in YouTube history. However, much to many users’ chagrin, YouTubers like PewDiePie, Logan Paul and Shane Dawson were excluded from the video. This sparked a massive backlash. The video received over 18 million dislikes, making it the most disliked video of all time.

Other contenders are the Sadak 2 trailer with 13.4 million dislikes, and Justin Bieber’s 2010 song Baby, with 11.99 million dislikes.

The longest video on YouTube was created by Jonathan Harchick, totalling 571 hours, one minute and 41 seconds. YouTube only allows videos to be 20Gb in size, meaning Harchick video is a masterpiece of video compression.

Here are the top 20 YouTubers:

1. PewDiePie (108 million subscribers)
2. HolaSoyGerman (42 million subscribers)
3. Whinderssonnunes (41.5 million subscribers)
4. Felipe Neto (40.8 million subscribers)
5. elrubiusOMG (39.2 million subscribers)
6. Fernanfloo (38.8 million subscribers)
7. Lusito Comunica (34.8 million subscribers)
8. Luccas Neta (33.1 million subscribers)
9. VEGETTA777 (31.8 million subscribers)
10. Rezendeevil (28.5 million subscribers)
11. Markiplier (27.8 million subscribers)
12. Jacksepticeye (25.9 million subscribers)
13. VannosGaming (25.4 million subscribers)
14. Yuya (24.6 million subscribers)
15. DanTDM (24.3 million subscribers)
16. Ninja (24.2 million subscribers)
17. Logan Paul Vlogs (22.6 million subscribers)
18. Nigahiga (21.5 million subscribers)
19. Shane (21.1 million subscribers)
20. Jake Paul (20.3 million subscribers)

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