Seniors are watching twice as much YouTube on TVs as they were a year ago

YouTube is back on top of the TV world, and senior citizens are a big reason why. The latest edition of Nielsen‘s The Gauge report found that YouTube accounted for 11.6% of TV usage in February, with traffic from users ages 65 and up nearly doubling year-over-year.

The 11.6% share is the highest figure among the media platforms measured for Nielsen’s report. Disney, which had led the previous iteration of The Gauge, fell back to second place with a 10% share. Fox, driven by a multiplatform Super Bowl strategy that incorporated Tubi, ranked third at 8.3%.

YouTube’s dominance of The Gauge reached a new level last August, when it became the first streaming hub to account for 10% of all TV usage. Those statistics validate YouTube’s heavy investment in its TV app, which has allowed it to dethrone linear channels while staying ahead of its rivals.

Though YouTube is nearing peak saturation in the United States, it still has room to grow among older audiences — and that’s exactly what’s happening. Nielsen noted that 65-and-up viewers watched 96% more YouTube

on TVs than they did a year ago. Thanks to that increase, seniors now watch nearly as much YouTube on TVs as kids between the ages of two and 11.

Podcasts account for a significant portion of that growth. More than half of Americans over the age of 11 have now watched a video podcast, and YouTube has put itself at the forefront of that format by bringing its podcast library to more than one billion users per month. Among American podcast consumers, the 55+ cohort is more like to use YouTube than Spotify, according to Edison Research.

YouTube’s ongoing refinement of its TV app gives it a rosy outlook for future installments of The Gauge. To check out the current edition of Nielsen’s report, head over to the measurement firm’s website.