This study researched and analyzed the usage habits of YouTube amongst DePaul University students. Our study was to make the connection between the most commonly viewed categories and the type of user they were classified as. This study included what is main purpose of accessing or using YouTube, what type of entertainment were they likely to view, and also what motivated DePaul students to subscribe to certain channels on YouTube. In addition, what was the likeliness of DePaul students to use YouTube as a source when they had a “How To” question. This also included, exploring the type of genre or category that DePaul students mostly watch to learn something new. Previous studies have focused on why YouTube has become the main source of music sharing among teenagers, and the rise of Do-It-Yourself videos. Other studies have focused on the finance part of YouTube and how it is generating revenue. However, there have not been many studies conducted to uncover the specific usage habits of YouTube’s users. In our study, we used a convenience survey, which was sent electronically to a small portion of the entire population of DePaul University students. This survey keeps confidentiality of the surveyor’s information and answer that they provide, and also remain anonymous. Therefore, this study will not be an accurate reflection of the whole DePaul University student population.

We created an online survey to gather the data needed for measuring the usage of YouTube amongst the DePaul students. This survey collected students’ preferences for primary usage of YouTube and asked for demographic information. We hypothesized that DePaul students were likely to seek help from a YouTube video, DePaul students were likely to listen to music while surfing YouTube, and finally DePaul students were likely to subscribe to a YouTube channel after watching more than 1 video from that same channel. Since this survey is only directed to DePaul students, this is only a sample of a population of college students; therefore we cannot fully inference the way all college students use YouTube.

According to our data, the majority of the students, being the lower female classmen preferred to use YouTube for listening to music, rather than using it to seek for additional help. Our results indicated that only 18.37% would watch YouTube videos for help compared to 65.31% of the students would use Google for help, thus not supporting our first hypothesis. YouTube is known for its popular entertainment and music videos, from our results it showed that majority, 46%, of our participants used YouTube mainly because of music, and thus this supports our second hypothesis. Finally, our results presented that students were likely to subscribe to a channel after watching 1+ videos, this did support our third hypothesis.

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