Over 16 million Australians entertained & amused online
New research from Roy Morgan shows 16.2 million Australians aged 14+ (77%) access entertainment and amusement services online in an average four weeks including watching videos, listening to music, playing games, uploading photos, downloading music, watching TV, streaming or downloading video clips, TV programs, games, feature length movies and more.
New research from Roy Morgan shows 16.2 million Australians aged 14+ (77%) access entertainment and amusement services online in an average four weeks including watching videos, listening to music, playing games, uploading photos, downloading music, watching TV, streaming or downloading video clips, TV programs, games, feature length movies and more.
Watching videos online using sites such as YouTube is the most popular online entertainment and amusement activity done by over 13.2 million Australians (63%) in an average four weeks and is slightly more popular with men (65%) than women (61%).
Over 9 million Australians (43%) listen to music online in an average four weeks and this activity is also slightly more popular amongst men (44%) than women (42%).
In third place is participating and playing games online which is done by 7.9 million Australians (38%) and perhaps surprisingly women (40%) are more likely to be playing games online than men (36%).
Around a third of Australians, 6.7 million (32%), upload photos online to sites such as Facebook or Pinterest with women (35%) more likely to do so than men (28%).
Other entertainment and amusement activities undertaken online include downloading music (27% in an average four weeks), watching TV such as ABC iview (22%), streaming or downloading video clips (19%), streaming or downloading TV programs (18%), watching movies (17%), downloading audio/video podcasts (17%), streaming or downloading games (14%), streaming or downloading feature length movies (14%), viewing adult entertainment (13%), watching an event live such as a concert (11%), participating in gambling (8%) or uploading videos to sites like YouTube (7%).
Entertainment & Amusement services activities done online – September 2020
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia, August – September 2020. n=11,034. Base: Australians 14+
Gen Z is the most likely generation to watch online videos
Nearly two-thirds of Australians (63%) watch videos online at sites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Rumble and others in an average four weeks representing 13.2 million Australians aged 14+.
Unsurprisingly it is people in Gen Z, born between 1991-2006, and basically Australians aged under 30, who are the most likely to watch videos online with 75% doing so in an average four weeks – more than double the rate for the Pre-Boomers (37%) born before 1946.
The likelihood of watching videos online is strongly correlated to age with 68% of Millennials watching videos online, 59% of people in Gen X and 56% of Baby Boomers.
Australians watching online videos by Generation – Sept. 2020
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia, August – September 2020. n=11,034. Base: Australians 14+
Although most online entertainment and amusement activities are correlated to age, with younger Australians more likely to partake in the activity than older Australians, there are exceptions including watching TV online and gambling online.
Around a quarter of Millennials (25%) watch TV such as ABC’s iview online in an average four weeks – higher than any other generation, and the generations most likely to gamble online in an average four weeks are Millennials (10%), Gen X (9%) and Baby Boomers (8%).
Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan, says entertainment activities are a big part of the online experience and over 16.2 million Australians engage in at these activities at least once a month with watching videos, listening to music and playing games the favourites:
“Over 16.2 million Australians access online entertainment and amusement activities in an average four weeks and watching online videos on sites like YouTube and competitors such as Dailymotion, Rumble is the top entertainment activity undertaken by 13.2 million Australians.
“Gen Z, those born from 1991-2006 and largely representing Australia’s teenagers and twentysomethings is the most likely to be watching videos (75%) of any generation, and also the most likely to be listening to music (58%) and playing games (50%).
“This won’t come as a surprise as Gen Z are the first generation to grow up with powerful smartphones in hand from a young age that give access to the digital universe at a tap of a thumb, or even via instant facial recognition. In fact, the average smartphone available today is far more powerful than the average laptop computer that Millennials (born from 1976-1990) were using to do their schoolwork and go online in the early 2000s.
“This still gives Millennials, who are now largely in their 30s and early 40s and ensconced in the workforce, a leg up on older generations that came of age before technology was so ubiquitious. Millennials trail only Gen Z for the online activities they undertake with 68% watching videos, 48% listening to music and 36% playing games online in an average four weeks.
“Of course the digital world is increasingly accessible to Australians of all ages and this is evident when one considers that 78% of Gen X (born 1961-1975), 75% of Baby Boomers (1946-1960) and nearly half of Pre-Boomers (49%) born prior to 1946 and now aged 75+ engage in at least one entertainment activity online in an average four weeks.
“Roy Morgan’s Single Source survey conducted with over 50,000 Australians per year allows in-depth analysis of the media and entertainment choices Australians make and can be tracked and examined against a wide range of other consumer metrics including demographic and psychographic segmentations, sports participation and spectating and consumer purchasing and retail preferences both online and via traditional bricks and mortar stores.”
Margin of Error
The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.
| Sample Size | Percentage Estimate |
| 40% – 60% | 25% or 75% | 10% or 90% | 5% or 95% | |
| 1,000 | ±3.0 | ±2.7 | ±1.9 | ±1.3 |
| 5,000 | ±1.4 | ±1.2 | ±0.8 | ±0.6 |
| 7,500 | ±1.1 | ±1.0 | ±0.7 | ±0.5 |
| 10,000 | ±1.0 | ±0.9 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 |
| 20,000 | ±0.7 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 |
| 50,000 | ±0.4 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 | ±0.2 |
