Report: 2023 Marks “Inflection Point” in U.S. Viewing Trends

For the first time, American adult consumers will spend more time on digital video this year than with traditional TV, per new data from Insider Intelligence.

Traditional TV is defined in the report as any consumption happening via cable, satellite, telcos or over-the-air antenna, while digital video encompasses OTT/connected streamers and social media content. Last year, U.S. adults spent an average of 3 hours and 2 minutes per day watching digital video and 3 hours and 7 minutes watching linear TV. Daily television time has been declining every year since 2013, with a slight Covid-19-driven uptick in 2020. Daily TV viewing will continue to fall through 2024. Digital video time, meanwhile, has seen double-digit growth every year between 2011 and 2021. Growth slowed to single digits in 2022 but will remain positive through 2024.

In 2023, daily TV time is expected to fall to 2 hours and 55 minutes, while digital video time will climb to 3 hours and 11 minutes. Of total daily time spent with TV and digital video, linear is expected to have a 47.7 percent share—falling below 50 percent for the the first time—with digital video at 52.3 percent.

“This milestone is driven by people spending more and more time watching video on their biggest and smallest screens, whether it’s an immersive drama on a connected TV or a viral clip on a smartphone,” said Paul Verna, principal analyst and head of the digital advertising and media desk at Insider Intelligence. “The growth of digital video is especially impressive when you consider that, as recently as four years ago, it accounted for roughly half of TV time. And bear in mind that our time spent forecasts are for adults only. Given teens’ preferences for social and streaming video over TV, we can expect these trends to continue to shift in favor of digital.”

The increasing presence of live sports on streaming services is helping to drive the shift to digital viewing, the report adds.

The report also found that YouTube and Netflix are neck and neck in terms of viewing time, with each grabbing an average of about 33 minutes per day among U.S. adults. Hulu ranks second at 24 minutes, and then Prime Video at 11 and Disney+ with 8. Meanwhile, average daily time spent with videos on social networks among U.S. adults will rise by 9.3 percent to 45.2 minutes this year, led by TikTok, with its usage increasing 14.2 percent to 17.4 minutes. TikTok will overtake Facebook as the most-consumed social network among U.S. adults, with expected usage of 56 minutes a day versus YouTube’s 48 minutes.

“TikTok versus Netflix will be a major trend to watch this year,” said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. “The lines between social and entertainment have blurred, and TikTok is now coming for the bigger screen video players. New TikTok users add incremental new time spent, while its efforts in longer-form video, livestreaming and, more recently, music streaming, keep users on the platform longer. Growth in time spent on Netflix, meanwhile, is stagnant.”

Enberg added, “TikTok’s enormous popularity among young consumers is also what gives it an edge: We expect 18-to-24-year-old TikTok users in the U.S. to spend an average of 1 hour on the app per day this year. With TikTok sending notifications to users ages 13 to 17 when they’ve spent more than 100 minutes on the app in a day, it stands to reason that teens are spending an exorbitant amount of time using TikTok.”