71 percent using video-sharing sites: Pew report

The eyes have it: 71 percent of online Americans are using sites like YouTube and Vimeo, up from 66 percent a year ago, and 33 percent in 2006, according to the Pew Internet Project.

“The rise of broadband and better mobile networks and devices has meant that video has become an increasingly popular part of users’ online experiences,” Kathleen Moore of Pew, said in a statement. “People use these sites for every imaginable reason — to laugh and learn, to watch the best and worst of popular culture and to check out news."

Video-sharing sites are also "very social spaces as people vote on, comment on, and share these videos with others.”

YouTube, Pew said, reports that 48 hours of video are posted on the site "every minute. And since 2005 the number of visits to the site has grown from 8 million views a day to over 3 billion per day" in 2011." YouTube gets more than 200 million views a day via mobile connections.

Parental eyeballs are also increasing on YouTube and related sites: 81 percent of parents in the Pew survey said they visit video-sharing sites, up from 72 percent in May 2010, "while non-parental use dipped slightly from the 63 percent reported in the same survey."

The increase, Pew said, "might also be attributable to the fact that parents with minors at home are younger as a group than the non-parents cohort and use of video-sharing sites is linked to younger users."

If we're not watching YouTube, we may be shooting videos to upload to it or to share with others. Pew says 34 percent of cell phone owners say they've shot video with their phones; 26 percent have watched video on their phones; and 22 percent have posted videos or photos online.

When it comes to combining cell phones and video, "men are more likely to watch videos on their mobile devices than women, but both sexes are equally likely to record and post videos," Pew said.

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