What the left needs to understand about YouTube

The platform is massively popular. Few understand how young men actually use it.

Now that online streaming has surpassed cable and broadcast for the first time, attention is turning to the platforms that viewers (and voters) are adopting in lieu of traditional television. By any measure, YouTube is chief among them— Pew estimates it overtook Facebook as the most used social media platform in the US over a year ago.

YouTube has a commanding influence on what young men see and hear day-to-day. In the most recent wave of YMRP’s ongoing survey research, 88 percent of men aged 18-29 said they’ve “used YouTube” recently, and 53 percent said they’ve seen news on the platform within the past week. When using it, young men typically spend an hour per day, with about ten percent leaving it on for several hours per day.

But what does this mean in practice? YouTube is massive, catering to every interest imaginable. It appears across platforms– embedded on other sites and in-app feeds. Some users consume only audio content (music or podcasts), others watch only video (like captioned clips to scroll through late at night), and many use it for both.

The latest YRMP survey asked young men to describe how they use YouTube in their own words. Of those who said they used the platform recently, we asked, “You said you've recently used YouTube. What are some examples of channels or accounts you've watched recently? Please say as many or as few as you would like.” This question reached the 88 percent of the sample who had recently used it for any purpose, not just news.

Based on the responses, we then compiled a dataset of 1,116 unique creators–more than one per respondent in our sample of 1,079. Most respondents who cited specific accounts mentioned one or two names total, but their responses illustrate just how broad and diverse young men’s YouTube use is.

Mr. Beast remains number one

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Beast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) tops every metric. By a lot. He was the most recognized influencer in our explicit survey questions, with about 46 percent of young men recognizing his name and 35 percent recalling his content. In the open-ended responses, about 11 percent said they had watched his content recently–dwarfing all competitors. Just under 3 percent of respondents said they’d recently watched content from Darren Jason Watkins Jr. (aka IShowSpeed) or Mark Fischbach (aka Markiplier). About two percent mentioned Joe Rogan or Kai Cenat. Other accounts breaking one percent included WWE’s official content, Good Mythical Morning, Charles White Jr. (aka penguinz0 or moistcr1tikal), NBA official content, and Cory DeVante Williams (aka CoryxKenshin).

The right still gets more views than the left, but both are dwarfed by apolitical content

By any measure, right-leaning content outperforms left-leaning content in name recognition and attention. Joe Rogan, in particular, retains a large following– about 31 percent of young men said they follow him in some capacity, and 46 percent recognize his name. But in our open-ended responses, only 2 percent said they watched him recently.

In fact, many YouTube accounts enjoy significantly larger followings than Rogan. With 19.9m subscribers, his YouTube account ranks 60th among the 1,116 creators young men report watching in our survey. Rogan’s YouTube presence is below that of several “challenge” YouTubers like FaZe Rug, gaming streamers like Markiplier, the Hindi-language musical conglomerate T-Series, KSI, and others.

Roughly 75 percent of accounts cited in the open-ended data had under 5 million subscribers and about 40 percent under 1 million. A total of 120 mentioned accounts in the open-ended data had under 100,000 followers. Far from being dominated by a handful of famous and well-heeled professional influencers, YouTube hosts a wide array of content from creators with modest followings. Most of young men’s attention is allocated to smaller, less-recognized creators who collectively reach a wider audience than the Rogans and Logans of the world.

For many, YouTube is background noise

Additionally, plenty of young men said they didn’t pay a ton of attention to who, specifically, they were watching. They watch YouTube for general interests (“music”), specific needs (“how to videos for the project I was working on”), or generic hobbies or habits (“I watch lets-plays”, “I use YouTube for Halo,” etc.).

For example, several respondents mentioned watching “Mr. Olympia,” referring to the variety of channels around that specific corner of the men’s sports and bodybuilding world. Half of Charles White Jr.’s followers know him as penguinz0 and half know him as Cr1TiKaL/MoistCr1TiKaL. Those who said they follow “Simon Whistler” may have been referring to the content he produces on Brain Blaze, Casual Criminalist, Into The Shadows, Megaprojects, Side Projects, and War Fronts.

About 3.5 percent said they use YouTube to watch video game content. Several respondents said their primary use for YouTube was “Halo.” “Mount and Blade” and “Motor VR” - a specific compositional style of racing videos - also appeared in several responses. When respondents say they used YouTube to “watch Elden Ring,” they are likely not following Bandai Namco’s official page, which has fewer than a million subscribers. Rather, they’re watching that type of content regardless of the specific creator.

Plenty of young men aren't following specific accounts with any great loyalty. Many respondents indicated they simply used YouTube to pursue a particular genre, but didn't reference any specific accounts. For example, some respondents said they watch things like

> "[J]ust random how-to videos"

> "Different channels just to see what a game is about before committing to buying it"

> "Nothing in particular - I like educational content[.] I want to watch something where I feel like I am learning something."

> "I only really listen to a playlist I made on YouTube."

> "I don't watch channels[.] I use it to listen to music."

Others say they simply watch whatever they’re fed:

> "I just watch whatever pops up on YouTube shorts."

> "I don't pay attention to channel names.'

> "I watch a lotta podcasts"

> "I use YouTube for entertainment purposes - to find funny or interesting things"

The chart below shows that among the young men who use YouTube but don’t follow specific accounts, most use YouTube for music, game reviews, clips, “whatever’s on,” and sports highlights. While only 3 percent say they "watch whatever's on," about 29 percent of users think in terms of content type or genre rather than in terms of specific accounts.

In other words, much of YouTube consumption is "non-specific,” challenging the idea that the platform is dominated by a handful of respected, easily co-optable individual "messengers.” A lot of young guys do not particularly care what they’re watching at any given time and many don’t even know the names of the accounts they’re watching. They say they "watch" their favorite games through various streamers and lets-play content, or they simply consume"entertaining stuff” from more or less anonymous accounts that upload clips of copyrighted content.

Virtually none of this content is in any way political. Far more young men use YouTube for video game and tech reviews, standup comedy Reels, background noise, and other uses than for political information. While 25 percent of 18-29 year-old men in our data say they will watch CNN when they seek out political information, their qualitative responses suggest this is uncommon.

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The left is often told to “get on YouTube,” advice that is obviously true. Most young people use it at least a little, and a considerable share use it for multiple hours per day. Moreover, polls have shown that young voters who have moved away from Democrats in recent years report they’re more likely to use YouTube—and specifically for news—than they would say of traditional venues like television and the major networks.

But “get on YouTube” is not a strategy. Too many people use it for too many different purposes to assume ad saturation or the occasional late-game podcast interviews will suffice. Treating YouTube as just another platform to be present on is to fundamentally understand its complexity.

Rather, advocates and campaigns trying to increase their influence on YouTube must proceed with a few facts in mind:

• Brand recognition does not equal brand admiration. In each wave of our survey, we’ve found considerable gaps between influencers’ name recognition and actual trust. In this wave, only 39 percent of those who report seeing Rogan’s content both “liked and trusted him, 25 percent said they liked him but didn’t trust him, and 25 percent said they didn’t like him or trust him. Democrats entering space must understand they’re often speaking with someone who a considerable share of viewers consider to be an entertaining bullshitter.

• This space is too large and competitive to assume quick wins. The sheer number of 10m+ follower accounts, the best of which typically take over a decade to build, should give pause to those believing the deficit of left-leaning content in this domain can be remedied in the next cycle or two.

• Many users want “content,” not sources. Many YouTube users have subject-matter interests like gaming, standup, and tech reviews rather than loyalty to specific accounts. This suggests that in addition to finding specific influencers and creators to work with, Democrats need to create content– low-budget, easily-shareable short-form material that can be boosted into Reels and recommendations queues.

• No matter how you measure it, explicitly political content represents a minuscule fraction of YouTube content. Trump choosing to buddy up with UFC and crypto content creators reflects this understanding. Only 29 percent of young men in our most recent survey said they sought out any sort of political content anywhere on social media. Building YouTube literacy necessitates an understanding of the creators and influencers young men trust and pay attention to–none of whom are political figures.

YouTube as a tool for listening. Building up content and influencers on YouTube will take substantial time. More immediately actionable is to use YouTube as a tool for identifying what issues and messages are resonating with young men online. That requires having a very deep database of influencers (particularly including non-political sources) that specifically appeal to this audience and tools for listening and analyzing. This will be an area of focus for YMRI- more to come!