As streaming services and digital offerings saturate the market, young adults find themselves on the front line of a profound change in consumption. Faced with the inflation of digital services, 18-24 year-olds are sounding the alarm. A new Ipsos study for Sharesub reveals that this generation, despite being ultra-connected, is the first to sacrifice its leisure activities in order to save money.
A record digital budget for Gen Z
Despite often limited incomes, young adults spend between €59 and €64 a month on subscriptions. This is higher than the French national average, estimated at €54.
| Type of subscription | Equipment rate (18-24 year-olds) |
| Video on demand (VOD) | 77% |
| Music streaming | 66% |
| E-commerce services | 40% |
Subscription cancellations a reflex for 18-24 year olds
The fact that 70% of 18-24 year -olds have already cancelled their subscription or are considering doing so for financial reasons is not just a statistic; it is the sign of a shift in consumption patterns. Where the French average is 56%, young adults are being forced to make much more radical choices to make ends meet.
Far from giving up their favourite content altogether, they are deploying adaptive strategies to get round the price barrier. For example, 41% of them now use ‘intermittent’ subscriptions, an agile method that involves activating or cancelling services as films and series are released, so that they never pay for nothing.
However, this constant budgetary pressure is also pushing some of this generation towards riskier solutions: 32% of 18-24 year-olds admit to having already resorted to illegal streaming, three times more than the national average.
The hidden cost of forgetting to cancel
The study also points to a major difficulty in day-to-day management. 38% of young people experience mental fatigue due to the multiplication of offers.
This confusion has a direct impact on their wallets:
- 58% of 18-24 year-olds have already forgotten to cancel a subscription, paying unnecessarily for an unused service.
- Nearly a third of young people have repeated this oversight on several occasions.
Co-subscription: the solution for 7 out of 10 young people
Given this situation, legal cost-sharing is the solution of the future. 71% of French people (and 7 out of 10 young people) are now in favour of co-subscription as a way of countering rising prices.
Today, 56% of young people already share their accounts on a one-off or regular basis. For Jean-Brice de Cazenove, CEO of Sharesub, this practice makes it possible to “facilitate long-term paid access to digital services” while guaranteeing savings of up to 75%.
Find out more :
📥 Download the extract from the Sharesub x Ipsos study in PDF format to find the main infographics and data from our survey.
FAQ : Understanding the digital habits of 18-24 year olds
Because they often combine several types of service (VOD, music, games, cloud). Their average expenditure is €64/month, compared with €54 for the rest of the population.
The main risk is financial: 58% of young people pay unnecessarily for forgotten services. The second is psychological: 38% feel mental fatigue linked to managing these accounts.
It’s the practice of subscribing for a month, consuming specific content and then cancelling immediately. 41% of 18-24 year olds use this method to reduce their costs.
Yes. 65% of young people believe that a legal sharing solution (such as Sharesub) is the best defence against illegal streaming.
