YouTube Releases New Report Highlighting Rising Trends on Gen Z's Video Consumption

In order to shed some light on the factors influencing the most recent Gen Z video trends and how they connect to digital strategy, YouTube has released a new report titled "Culture and Trends" that integrates findings from ten different countries.

The 55-page paper delves further into three significant trends revealed by YouTube's data set:

• Community Creativity - Communities are taking specialized interests and transforming them into wider, shared experiences by utilizing the web's advantages for connectivity.

• Multi-format Creativity - The popularity of short-form video has, rather understandably, encouraged more artists to release a variety of content in order to capitalize on major trends while still utilizing the advantages of longer-form clips for the community and monetization.

• Responsive Creativity - YouTube further adds that throughout the pandemic, forms that cater to emotional needs, such as "comfort creators," "vibe content," and ASMR, have grown in popularity. In comparison to when we conducted our poll a year earlier, "83 percent of Gen Z have utilized YouTube to watch calming content that helps them relax."

The patterns suggest that younger viewers' tastes are diverging from the great, enduring trends of the past.

“We found that digital culture is now all about personally-relevant content. In fact, 65% of Gen Z (online 18-24 year olds) agree that content that’s personally relevant to them is more important than the content that lots of other people talk about. Individual viral videos - the Davids, Charlies, and, yes, even foxes that broke through in the past - are becoming increasingly less central to trends in a world where audiences and creators prioritize moments that matter to them and their lives.”

These rising trends are covered in great detail in the full report, and YouTube has also released two infographic overviews of the main points.

The full report is available for download here.