User time on Korea’s favorite social media YouTube soared 38 percent over the last year as the average Korean spent 23 hours per month watching the online video platform.

Koreans spent 46 billion minutes watching YouTube in August, up 38 percent from the same month last year, according to a sample study of 40,000 Android users by local mobile app and retail analysis service provider WiseApp.

This was more than double the time spent on KakaoTalk, the country’s leading mobile messenger app, whose usage time was 22 billion minutes, up 11 percent on year. Korea’s top portal site Naver followed, gaining 25 percent to 17 billion minutes, and Facebook with 4.5 billion minutes, up 13 percent.

The average time spent on YouTube per person surged 29 percent on year to 1,391 minutes in August. YouTube’s monthly active user count rose 7 percent to 33.08 million, second only to KakaoTalk, whose tally was 36.56 million.

The Google-owned service was the dominant platform across all age groups. Teens spent the longest time watching videos on YouTube, an average of 2,500 minutes. Those in their 20s came second, with 1,882 minutes.

Viewers aged 50 and older spent more time on the site than the 30-40s, with the gap widened compared with the survey in April. The 50s and older age group spent an average 1,206 minutes, while the 30s spent 1,105 minutes and the 40s 847 minutes.

Seniors also showed the biggest jump in viewing time over the past four months. Those aged 50 and older saw their YouTube usage time surge 15.4 percent compared with the April survey, while the 30s and 40s posted an increase of 11.8 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively.​

By Oh Dae-seok and Kim Hyo-jin

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]