Kids are spending 91 minutes a day on TikTok–and 56 minutes on YouTube

Back in 2020, kids started spending more time on TikTok than YouTube.

And that hasn’t changed.

In fact, according to parental control software company Qustodio, TikTok has only surged further ahead. A new report it put together for TechCrunch shows that in 2019, kids around the world between the ages of 4 and 18 spent an average of 48 minutes on YouTube per day, compared to 38 minutes on TikTok.

In 2020, the two flip-flopped: kids started spending an average of 75 minutes per day on TikTok compared to 64 minutes on YouTube.

By the end of 2021, TikTok’s lead had increased dramatically. Qustodio found that overall last year, kids spent a whopping 91 minutes per day on TikTok and 56 minutes on YouTube.

Qustodio arrived at these figures thanks to data from 400,000 families who use its parental monitoring services. Per TechCrunch, that means its data reflects kids’ actual real-world usage of apps, not estimations, so this is appears to be a pretty accurate look at where kids are currently spending their video-viewing time.

The fact that TikTok’s lead over YouTube continues to widen while kids’ time spent on YouTube went down from 2020 to 2021 seems to indicate that YouTube Shorts—which is getting over 30 billion views a day now—might not be as powerful a competitor for TikTok as YouTube wants it to be (at least, not with Gen Z and Gen Alpha viewers).

Qustodio’s report did show that YouTube is keeping kids’ interest more than a lot of other entertainment apps, though. In 2021, its 56-minutes-per-day average beat out Disney+ (47 minutes a day), Netflix (45 minutes), Amazon Prime Video (40 minutes), Hulu (38 minutes), and Amazon-owned Twitch (20 minutes).