With everybody stuck at home, YouTube and other similar video hosting and streaming sites have become the preferred mode of entertainment by the public. And as YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki notes, “quarantine life” videos have risen in popularity on the site.
In an interview on CNN, Wojcicki revealed the progression of interests as users began to spend more and more time in quarantine. During the early stages of the pandemic, she said users looked for videos about the basics of the coronavirus. There was also an uptick on videos about washing hands, as it has been a proven way to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Since then, videos about how to cut hair, exercising at home, and fixing dishwashers and freezers have shot up. Wojcicki said it is not surprising as people began to see “quarantine life” extending to the following months.
YouTube has experienced an increase in overall usage during the pandemic, with viewing time doubling compared to the same period in 2019. According to Nielsen, during the first week of April, 32 billion minutes of streaming time was spent on YouTube, an increase of 15 billion minutes when compared to the same period last year.
With so many eyes glued onto the site, Verdict says that Wojcicki has announced that videos that go against the World Health Organization’s coronavirus recommendations will be banned.
According to Wojcicki, this will include unsubstantiated medical claims like tumeric being able to cure COVID-19. This decision follows the site’s banning of videos that claim 5G technology is linked to the spread of the coronavirus.
YouTube is not the only video site that has gained from the coronavirus pandemic essentially locking people inside their own homes. Since people are stuck in their homes, Netflix saw its number of paid subscribers increase by 16 million. Another streaming site, Disney+, saw its paid subscribers ballon to 50 million subscribers.
YouTube may continue to experience that increase in viewing time as the coronavirus pandemic does not seem to be slowing down at all. The World Health Organization, in its Apr. 24 situation report, said that confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide now stand at 2,626,321 people, with 81,529 of those being new cases. The number of fatalities globally is at 181,938 people, with 6,260 of those being new deaths.
In the United States, the Apr. 23 update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases at 865,585 people. The number of people in the United States that has died from COVID-19 is at 48,816.