Fall in proportion of younger people watching traditional TV

In its annual study into the UK’s media habits, just 48% of young audiences are tuning in to broadcast TV every week, down from 76% in 2018.

Children aged four to 15 are tuning out at a similar rate, with only 55% watching broadcast TV each week in 2023, compared with 81% in 2018, with the weekly reach of traditional television dropping by a record amount in the last year.

Younger viewers are also watching television for shorter periods, at 33 minutes each day – down 16% year on year – of which, 20 minutes is spent watching live TV.   

In comparison, 16 to 24-year-olds are spending three times as long each day (one hour 33 minutes) watching video-sharing platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.  

The report found that overall, people in the UK watched more TV and video content at home in 2023, averaging four hours and 31 minutes a day, an increase of six minutes.

Ofcom said this was primarily driven by an increase in daily viewing to video-sharing platforms (up 12% to 49 minutes) and to broadcasters’ video-on-demand services, such as iPlayer and ITVX (up 29% to 20 minutes).

TV screens are also becoming more popular for watching YouTube content, with 34% of time spent watching YouTube at home now featuring viewing through a TV set – up from 29% in 2022.

Ofcom said the proportion watching YouTube on a television set rose to 45% among children aged four to 15 – up from 36% in 2022. 

Daily viewing on subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services was up 6% to 38 minutes in 2023, with Netflix remaining the most popular service at an average of 21 minutes per person per day, and accounting for more than half of all SVoD viewing.