• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, August 1, 2011

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more online Americans are using video-sharing sites, and more frequently. As of May 2011, 71% of online adults reported watching videos on a video-sharing site such as YouTube or Vimeo.

Wikipedia describes video sharing steps as follows: A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video clips to an Internet website, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view this video. The website, mainly used as the video hosting website, is called the video sharing website. Video hosting services are increasingly popular with the explosion in popularity of blogs, forums, other interactive pages, with the use of camera phones and DVRs.

Video Sharing Site User Demographics (% of Internet Users in Each Group Watching Videos on V-Sharing Site)
Internet Users	Ever Use Sharing Site	Used Sharing Site "Yesterday"
All Internet Users	71%	28%
Gender
Men	71	32
Women	71	25
Age
18-29	92	47
30-49	80	27
50-64	50	20
65+	31	11
Race/Ethnicity
White, non Hispanic	69	25
Black, non Hispanic	76	28
Hispanic	81	39
HH Income
< $30K	71	26
30-49.9	75	36
50-74.9	76	25
$75K +	81	32
Education
High school grad	63	18
Some college	75	33
College+	75	34
Source: Pew Research, Spring Tracking Survey, 2011

The report notes a five-percentage-point increase from the 66% of online adults who reported being video-sharing site users a year earlier and a 38-point increase from five years ago when the Project took its first reading on use of such sites.

Video Sharing Over Time (% Web Users Visiting Sharing Sites)
Year	Shared on Typical Day	Total
2006	8%	33%
2007	15	48
2008	16	52
2009	19	62
2010	23	66
2011	28	71
Source: Pew Research, Spring Tracking Survey, 2011

Rural Internet users are now just as likely as users in urban and suburban areas to have used these sites. Some 68% of rural internet users have gone to such sites, compared with 71% of online suburbanites and 72% of online urban residents. Those are statistically insignificant differences and show that since 2009, online rural residents have caught up to others in using these sites.

At the same time, rural Internet users are still less likely to be visiting video-sharing sites on a typical day (14% vs. 31% and 33% for suburban and urban residents, respectively).

Online Sharing Geographically (% Web Users Visiting Sites)
Year	Urban	Suburban	Rural
12/2006	38%	23%	21%
6/2009	52	57	37
4/2011	72	71	68
Source: Pew Research, Spring Tracking Survey, 2011

Another notable and persistent trend, says the report, is that non-white adult Internet users have higher rates of video-sharing site use than their white counterparts, a consistent finding since 2006. Overall, 69% of white internet users said they had visited video-sharing sites, 13 points higher than in April 2009, and more than double the 31% reported when the question was first asked in December 2006. At the same time, 79% of online non-whites reported using video-sharing sites. That figure is 12 points higher than April 2009, and 41 points higher than in 2006.

81% of parents in the survey reported visiting video-sharing sites, compared with 61% of the non-parents. Parental use increased nine points from 72% in May 2010, while non-parental use dipped slightly from the 63% reported in the same survey.

This increase might also be attributable to the fact that parents with minors at home are younger as a group than the non-parents cohort, and use of video-sharing sites is linked to younger users.

The rise in use of video-sharing sites is at least partly being driven by the growth in content on sites like YouTube and by user contributions, which then possibly encourage site visits by contributors' friends and others who pass around links about popular amateur videos. The latest statistics from YouTube are that 48 hours of content are uploaded every minute to the site and the range of contributions is striking. YouTube lists 28 different categories for channels of video that are contributed and dozens of subcategories ranging from automobiles and gaming, to activism and politics.

For additional information from PEWresearch, please visit here.