Approximately three-quarters of 393 preschool and K-12 teachers in the U.S. say they use YouTube for instructional purposes, with roughly half using it on a daily or weekly basis, according to our new nationally representative survey.

Those findings come from our new research, published in June 2026 in Educational Researcher, an academic journal.

Our sample included teachers from all grade levels and subject areas, and from across public, charter and private schools.

Our results revealed that teachers who said they use YouTube as an instructional tool do so for a considerable amount of classroom time, alongside other common teaching methods like lectures and group work.

Of the 76.5% of respondents who said they use YouTube for teaching, an average of 17.9% of their total yearly instructional time was spent showing instructional videos, ranging from 1% to 100% of instructional time.

Rather than allowing students to watch........

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