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Is Social Media the New Movie Theater? Viewing Times Amass for TikTok, Instagram

Is Social Media the New Movie Theater? Viewing Times Amass for TikTok, Instagram

By Movieguide® Contributor

New collected research from Variety finds that movies and shows may have to compete with long-form content on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, which grows each year.

“Video now accounts for 58.8% of average time spent per day with social networks, up from 48.0% in 2021, per eMarketer,” Variety says.

Data from 2024 shows users spend an average of 2.48 hours on TikTok per day, 2.46 on Instagram, 2.28 on Facebook and 2.08 on YouTube.

It’s hard to compete with social media’s addictive qualities.

“Younger audiences’ video preferences are shifting away from TV and movies,” Variety reported. “Young people tend to have more diversified media diets that include more gaming, non-premium video and social media. But that has meant they’re spending much less time watching TV and movies compared with older viewers. Watching TV and movies together accounted for just 32% of media time among 13-24-year-olds, versus 59% for consumers over 35, per Hub Entertainment Research.”

According to a 2023 survey, both Millennials and Gen X were more likely to prefer social videos or livestreams over shows and movies.

“Consumers have only so much time in a day to engage with video. Short-form video and user-generated content consumed on social platforms raise the newer possibility that this viewing will begin to eat into engagement with TV shows and movies,” Variety reported.

“For some users, watching short-form video could indeed have a disruptive effect on viewing premium video content. Some consumers said their viewing of non-premium online video has in fact reduced time they spend watching ‘regular’ TV (episodic shows or movies), per Hub Entertainment Research,” Variety reported.

Smartphones are also replacing TVs, as they are the most-used screen to watch all kinds of video content.

“That gap is more severe among young people, who may now regard smartphones as their first screen for watching video content,” Variety said. “Social video is also carving out a place on living room screens, in more direct confrontation with SVOD apps. YouTube’s CTV viewing has become massive, and TikTok and X are also considering CTV apps.”

Short-form video platforms are also extending their length. We’ve seen this with Instagram and TikTok.

Movieguide® reported last month:

The past decade and a half has seen social media platforms relentlessly copy each other’s features, and now TikTok is back at it again as it replicates YouTube’s long-form video style.

“For TikTok, the ability to platform both short- and long-form videos — and keep users in the app instead of jumping elsewhere — is obviously an appealing strategy as it looks to jumpstart growth,” Variety reported on June 5. “Of course, doing so puts it in even more direct competition with YouTube, whose creators are producing potentially Emmy-worthy videos that bring in viewership on par with Disney and Netflix.”

“TikTok, has begun testing video upload limits of 60 minutes, up from a ceiling of 15 in 2023, 10 in 2022, 3 in 2021 and 60 seconds in 2017,” Variety reported.

Consulting company Deloitte US’s Jana Arbanas claims streamers will have to compete for Gen Z’s attention.

“They grew up with screens in their hands; they were growing up with user-generated content,” she said. “So I expect that behavior will persist. Over time, the streamers will start to lose that population.”

Deloitte analysts proposed a way to move forward when it comes to working with Gen Z’s tastes: “Trying to rebuild pay TV business models around streaming services could help reduce SVOD churn and slow attrition in the near-term, but the long game for success will likely involve reinventing the medium to be more personalized, more shoppable and more social. Providers will likely also need to widen their scope beyond TV and films to reach modern audiences and make their intellectual property work across social and video games.”


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