The online lives of 15-24s

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Gen Z are the digital generation: born and raised in a world with wi-fi, smartphones and social media.

So it’s no surprise that Ipsos iris data shows that 15-24 year olds spend more time online than any other age group.

But where are they spending all this time? How does this vary across different audiences? Which social media platforms are gaining traction with young people and whose losing their attention? Do young people favour mobile games or news? Spotify or Apple Music?

We’ve used Ipsos iris to answer these questions and more, mapping out what young people are doing online to help understand who they are, where they spend their time and how you can engage them.

Online overview

While young people do spend the longest time online, they actually have one of the smallest online ecosystems.

The average 15-24 year old visits 95 different brands online each month, which is some way behind the 124 brands visited by 25-34 year olds or the 122 that 35-44 year olds visit. In fact, just three brands – YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat – account for more than half of all time spent online for 15-24 year olds.

This provides a challenge for brands looking to grow engagement amongst younger audiences on their own platforms, but also an opportunity to share their content and build their brand on the likes of YouTube and TikTok.

Going social

It’s no secret that young people spend a lot of time on social media, but it’s important to understand how different audiences can be found on different platforms.

For example, YouTube and TikTok are the two biggest brands for time spent, but young women spend 50% longer on TikTok each month than men, while men spend 35% longer on YouTube than women.

Meanwhile, Reddit has seen significant growth in its reach over the last year, with 33% more 15-24 year old users in January 2025 compared to the previous year. Its important to understand how social media usage – and use cases – evolve, to ensure you are meeting your audience in the right place and the right time.

Media world

Young people are major consumers of media, with news, audio, and TV all reaching nine out ten 15-24 year olds a month.

Ipsos iris can help understand the different audiences that can be reached across these different channels and the brands within them.

For example, while the Spotify app has a higher monthly reach (67%) than Apple Music (57%), Apple Music has a higher proportion of users that are heavy online retail visitors (29% vs 23%). Spotify users are more likely to be heavy games visitors compared to Apple.

Retail habits

Despite being a much targeted group, young people actually spend the least time visiting retail sites and apps each month.
While the biggest brands like Amazon, eBay and Apple have cross-generational reach, young internet users are more likely to visit digital-only brands like Uber Eats, Vinted and Shein than the major high street names like M&S or Boots when compared to the average internet user.

In fact, Shein has grown its audience by 40% among 15-24 year olds over the last year, as have fellow low-priced retailers Temu (+47%) and AliExpress (+47%).

Emerging trends

Young people are also early adopters and we can see plenty examples of this online.

For example, 15-24 year olds are by far by the biggest monthly users of AI, with 40% of them visiting the OpenAI site or app in January 2025, compared to the 28% of 25-34 year olds, and more than double the number of 35-44 year olds (19%).

Elsewhere, we can see that as well as being open to using newer retail brands like Shein and Vinted, young people are also open to new ways of shopping. The number of 15-24 year olds using buy-now-pay-later platforms like Klarna (+40%) and Clearpay (+44%) has grown significantly over the last year.