Learning Together with YouTube? Adolescents’ Collective Use of Explanatory Audiovisual Content

Abstract

Although YouTube explanatory videos are a successful genre, there has been little research into the ways they form part of adolescents’ collective learning practices. To address this gap, the article examines the social relations and forms of collective interaction by which young people come to use explanatory content on YouTube. Our study of German pupils aged between 14 and 20 examines how and to what extent they engage with, view, recommend, and communicate about user-generated audiovisual instructions and explanations that cover school subjects and hobbies. The results show that the potentials of YouTube for collectively using learning- and education-related content often remain untapped, especially with respect to homework and the curriculum. While YouTube videos occupy an important place as a source of information for hobbies and school subjects, they have not prompted much collective engagement.

Keywords:

• Informal learning learning collectives school explanatory videos tutorials YouTube

The rise and widespread use of networked digital media has fundamentally changed the way people share and acquire knowledge (Drotner et al., 2009). In this ‘new culture of learning’ (Thomas & Brown, 2011) adolescents and young adults in particular are developing expertise in various fields outside formal education, vocational training, or structured apprenticeships using rich digital media repertoires (Wolf & Wudarski, 2017). These internet-based informal learning practices have been described as “geeking out” (Ito et al., 2010, p. 17) or “intense, autonomous, interest-driven learning” (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 104). Eschewing the use of non-­networked media such as books or television, these participatory and communicative forms of learning rely heavily on forums, social networks, blogs, wikis, social video networks and other collaborative platforms that allow a wide range of people to create, modify, remix, and distribute content (Jenkins et al., 2015).

This shift is epitomized by video tutorials that are published, liked, commented on, and shared via social video platforms such as YouTube (Lange, 2018) or TikTok (Wolf, 2021). The explanatory audiovisual content enables learning-related and education-related interaction between viewers and between users and producers (Burgess & Green, 2018). YouTube tutorials are extremely popular among adolescents and have become a central element of informal education both for acquiring skills and knowledge with regard to personal hobbies or professional interests as well as in terms of school subjects (Anderson et al., 2023). “YouTube is a key space of their media diet and, in some cases, is their main source of information,” as Pires, Masanet, and Scolari (2021, p. 1176) note in reference to Spanish students. Similar findings have been made in other industrialized countries (e.g., Abuljadail et al., 2021; Liang & Wang, 2015; Wolf, 2021; Wolf et al., 2022).

While it is clear that YouTube has become a central part of adolescents’ media repertoire for all kinds of learning interests or needs (Honkomp-Wilkens et al., 2022; JIMplus, 2020), there is a lack of research on the usage of educational and knowledge-related audiovisual content on social video networks by adolescents and young adults, especially with respect to their practices of both individual and collective learning. A reason for this shortcoming may be that researchers continue to underestimate the growing importance of informal, user-generated educational opportunities for young people.

To address one aspect of this larger research gap, we examine the social constellations in which young people use explanatory content. Looking beyond formal settings of teaching and learning, this article reports on a study of German students aged between 14 and 20, investigating whether and how they collectively make use of user-generated audiovisual instructions and explanations for both school subjects and leisure activities.

Explanatory content on YouTube

Learning and educational videos on YouTube are difficult to categorize, let alone group under one heading (Perkel & Herr-Stephenson, 2008). The design spectrum of audiovisual knowledge formats on social video networks ranges from presentations, news and documentaries, reports, commentaries, tutorials, and video blogs to test reports, analyses, and explanatory videos (Wolf, 2021). Furthermore, they exist for any conceivable topic of interest, with presentation strategies varying according to didactic needs (Honkomp-Wilkens et al., 2022). Seen together, educational video formats span a continuum from performance videos via tutorials to explanatory videos along instructional design elements, with fluid transitions (Honkomp-Wilkens et al., 2022; Wolf, 2015a).

1. Performance videos feature the observable execution of a competence in the sense of a documentation or a self-presentation without further didactic processing such as skateboard trick or a painting technique. The intention behind the production of performance videos is to demonstrate skills, not to teach them. Nevertheless, they can be informative and may give some indication of what could be aspired to be learned.

2. Tutorials are instructions in which an activity is demonstrated for imitation or participation. They mainly impart procedural knowledge, but might also help to build up situational knowledge (especially through the specific context of application) and, with a high degree of repetition, also promote sensorimotor knowledge. They refer to concrete and demonstrable actions that provide “basic, step-by-step instruction on how to accomplish a certain task” (Purcariu, 2019, p. 65).

3. Explanatory videos convey declarative knowledge such as theories, concepts or complex descriptions of the world. They explain relationships and they contextualize and illustrate abstract knowledge (Kulgemeyer & Peters, 2016).

Although variations of these formats existed in the form of instructional and educational films on VHS tapes, DVDs, and broadcast services, YouTube has been massively popularized audiovisual knowledge formats since the end of the 2000s (Bétrancourt & Benetos, 2018; Lange, 2018). In contrast to instructional and educational films, they were often user-generated (Wolf, 2015b; Bruns & Schmidt, 2011). As of now, many successful channels have become professional endeavors, yet the underlying aesthetics, design principles, and platform logics derive from the early culture of YouTube (Burgess & Green, 2018) as an amateur medium of native (or authentic) self-presentation and communication. Central features of this production style are a direct address to the audience, the encouragement of the viewers to take action, the use of informal language and simplified means of production, and a seemingly unfiltered interaction with the producers and a sense of learning together (Wolf, 2015c).

Informal learning, learning Communities, and YouTube

As social media, together with ubiquitous smartphones, have enabled adolescents to network with larger interest groups, their informal learning has a fundamentally collective dimension of seeking, using, and sharing information to acquire knowledge and skills (Livingstone & Sefton-Green, 2016; Thomas & Brown, 2011). YouTube often occupies a central position in their media repertoire (Anderson et al., 2023; Pires et al., 2021) and offers “numerous ways in which viewers may engage in processes of informal learning that are socially oriented, engaging, and self-paced” (Lange, 2018). Yet research on interactional features of social video networks such as views, likes, and comments is sparse. What is generally assumed is that only a fraction of all users like a YouTube video, even fewer share a video and—relative to the high number of views—very few write comments, also in comparison to other video platforms such as TikTok (Burgess & Green, 2018).

Still, comments have the greatest potential for collective learning on YouTube: apart from simple ‘Thank you!’ notes, comments can be written to give positive or negative feedback, to ask questions, to correct mistakes, or to suggest ideas for further videos (Wolf, 2021). Moreover, Bitzenbauer et al. (2023) showed that high quality explanatory videos have a higher number of content-centered comments than lower quality videos, which could imply that viewers are interacting more intensely with high quality educational content.

Most discussions about informal group-based learning are based on the Communities of Practice (CoP) model first described by Lave and Wenger (1991) for vocational training and professional settings. While definitions have evolved over time, CoPs are usually treated to consist of a content domain, a collective of people interested in that field of learning and practice, and a jointly developed shared repertoire of knowledge and skills to increase the effectiveness of each member in the domain (Wenger, 2010; Wenger et al., 2002). Therefore, since CoPs ground on lived practice and interaction, they are difficult to sustain in digital environments. Following Wenger et al.’s (2009) catalogue of CoP requirements, in order to establish CoPs online, users should have the opportunity to “explore, define, and express a common identity,” to form a “mutual engagement around a practice,” to “explore, test, and refine good practice,” to “have ongoing exchanges, articulate perspectives, accumulate knowledge, and provide access to stories, tools, solutions, and concepts,” to “support an experience of togetherness that makes a community a social container for learning together,” to “get to know each other in relevant ways,” and “to take initiative, assume leadership, develop roles, and create subgroups, projects, and conversations” (p. 10–11).

Empirical studies of the media repertoires of learning communities linked to YouTube show that even the most prolific examples such as the so-called ‘YouTube polyglots’, a community of prolific language learners, complement YouTube with other networked media such as forums, blogs, websites, reddit threads or podcasts (Bruzos, 2023). In general, the media repertoires of real-world CoPs are rather complex and consist of a broader set of communication technologies, although YouTube often is a central part (Wolf 2007; Wolf & Wurdarski, 2017). Hence, YouTube arguably cannot provide the sole basis of a self-sufficient learning community or CoP, as it does not address the multiple kinds of interaction and communication they rest on. Very few users actually upload videos at all and thus dominate the discourse and engagement of learners on the platform.

Explanatory videos and learning collectives

As not all sorts of collaborative learning happen in the form of CoPs, Thomas and Brown (2011) propose a more general notion of learning collectives which they define as a group of people with skills and talents who, through public, highly mediated learning processes, can together generate better answers and solutions than individually without necessarily forming a community. For example, a YouTube video describing a way to run a database in the cloud at low cost might be of informational and instructional purpose in different problem-solving contexts and therefore collectives, such as a learning collective for setting up an e-commerce website or another learning collective for full-stack development with this specific database, without the video creator ever interacting with the specific collectives (Wolf & Wudarski, 2017).

In everyday practice, most young social media users do not create explanatory videos, yet they actively seek them out to solve a problem, to inform them about topics of interest, to entertain them, to allow them to become better in a hobby, or to receive help with school requirements (Wolf, 2021). These activities can have a communicative dimension and it does not suffice to concentrate on individual learners engaging with explanatory videos alone as that does not do justice to the potential collective context of learning in and with social media (Ito et al., 2010). These connections may be manifold, possibly including communication between users about a YouTube video offline or via other media, exchanges between content creators and viewers, and interactions between users on the platform. But while it is known that learners generally use other services such as messaging apps to share and discuss learning content with peers (Livingstone & Sefton-Green, 2016), the specifics of adolescents’ collective learning practices with YouTube explanatory content remain unclear and there is a lack of research on the use of YouTube videos in the context of learning collectives outside of the platform.

Our research questions therefore focus on the relationships and forms of interaction through which young people engage with explanatory content and may form part of learning collectives. We ask: How do adolescents collectively use YouTube explanatory videos? (RQ1) What role do platform affordances play in relation to the students’ educational and learning practices? (RQ2) How do explanatory videos circulate among adolescent peers? (RQ3) In what ways do students communicate about explanatory videos? (RQ4)

Data and methods

Our inquiry forms part of a larger research project on digital extracurricular learning practices among adolescents in Germany (Honkomp-Wilkens et al., 2022). In this context, we conducted interviews with 53 teenagers and young adults between the ages of 14 and 20 from different parts of Germany from September 2020 to November 2021. Of our respondents, 24 identified as female, 27 as male, and 2 as nonbinary. Due to COVID-19, all interviews took place with the Zoom video conferencing tool and varied in length from approximately 35 to 120 min. Prior to the video call, we sent an information letter to all ­participants and/or additionally to their legal guardians and obtained the participants’ informed consent to use their data by signing a privacy statement. Ethics approval was granted by the Bremen Senatorin für Kinder und Bildung, Stabsstelle IQHB/Bremen Senator for Children and Education, IQHB unit.

We followed a snowball sampling method starting with the existing contacts and social networks of the research group. We distributed flyers and information material in public places, through the project website, on social media profiles, and through Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube ads, and we reached out to educators active in extracurricular education programs. This multifaceted approach enabled us to put together a sample consisting of adolescents of different ages, from a variety of grades, and with a diversity of educational careers in schools across the country. Fifteen of our respondents were in their final year at a grammar school (18–20 yrs), six in the penultimate year of grammar school (17–18 yrs), 14 attended tenth grade (16 yrs), almost half of them in a secondary school. Six pupils were in ninth grade of a grammar school (15 yrs), the remaining two interviewees came from eight grade (14 yrs), others did not specify their school grade (n = 10), perhaps because they assumed that an age indication might suffice to locate them in the school grade system. Few had a non-German ethnic and cultural background and there were few from households with limited socioeconomic opportunities. What is more, given the broad age range from 14 to 20 years and the variety of learning and teaching environments, it can be assumed that respondents had different informal learning needs, possessed different skills for acquiring knowledge and had different views on peer relationships.

Given that diversity, the interviews sought to capture common traits in the experiences of young people with—and their collective use of—YouTube explanatory content. It consisted of two parts, each structured into thematic blocks. The first part of the interview schedule focused on the use of explanatory videos for leisure interests; the second part on the use of explanatory YouTube videos for school assignments and homework. In the part of the survey that concentrated on the social dimension of learning- and education-related practices and materials, we asked our respondents how and why they actively engage (or not) with explanatory videos on the platform, e.g., through commenting, liking, sharing, or producing videos themselves. We were also interested to learn how they exchange content and communicate about it, and to what extent collective forms of viewing together were established (the full list of questions available from the authors upon request).

Following the analytical procedures formulated by Mayring (2021), we examined the interview transcripts using the qualitative data-analysis software MAXQDA. In terms of collective usage, this procedure yielded a total of 4 general concepts, which were inductively developed and specified into 35 categories and sub-categories. The general concepts were: active participation, co-viewing, recommendations, and communication about explanatory videos. In the presentation of the results, we cluster these based on our four research questions around interaction affordances, viewing patterns, forms of recommendation, and communicative exchanges regarding explanatory videos.

Four coders worked in teams of two so that each interview was coded in two consecutive rounds and later discussed by the whole team. Regular meetings were held with respect to the analytical procedures, consonant and divergent coding decisions as well as ongoing questions about coding decisions, and documented in a logbook (available from the authors upon request). When quoting from the material, we use synonyms so to warrant the interviewees’ anonymity.

Results

Use: (not) interacting with explanatory videos

In general, the young people we interviewed only made limited use of the platform’s options for interaction and communication (RQ1). Respondents did not use the positive or negative rating of videos, indicated by the “Like” or “Dislike” button, frequently or regularly and if so they used the “Like” button more than the “Dislike” button. There were only 22 responses in the interviews where the students we spoke to mentioned the affordance of liking a video; only three times did they speak about disliking a clip. In 17 of the 22 responses, our interviewees gave likes to explanatory videos they watched for leisure purposes. It did not occur to many of them to like school-related content or they were browsing without login that makes commenting impossible; others refrained from doing so for strategic reasons so to not give away information about preferences that would help the platform to suggest content to them: “… with knowledge and stuff like that, I don’t really like to do that. Liking. Even if the videos are good, because then I get suggestions,” as one interviewee explained (interview 18, male, 16 yrs., grammar school, line 183). Other activities on YouTube, such as commenting on videos or uploading their own videos, were performed even more sporadically (only 12 passages were coded accordingly). In particular, videos that clearly conveyed curricular content were rarely given likes or dislikes.

When respondents did give likes, they did so for a variety of reasons. Respondents referred to the positive qualities of videos; content was regarded as funny, understandable, or interesting; the message was deemed worthy of support; or the videos appeared to be well made. In addition, the interviewees cited prosocial motives, such as acknowledging the efforts of the producers or increasing the producers’ popularity on the platform. Conversely, dislikes were given (or the function was not used at all) if content was dismissed or judged to be poorly made. There were technical reasons that also prevented users from awarding likes or dislikes, for instance, because they did not have an account on the platform, were not logged in, or they did not use their own device to access the platform.

In the five cases where videos with school-related content were evaluated positively, they were linked to an expression of success in school, for example, when watching particular content “got me through the A levels” (interview 18, male, 16 yrs., grammar school, line 181) or to the more general success of having understood a task or learning matter: “Sometimes I even give a comment like ‘Thank you for getting me through that’, because yes, it’s like that, because they helped me with school” (interview 15, male, 16 yrs., grammar school, line 139).

Likes and dislikes, though given to a particular video, also referred to the producer of a channel more broadly and usually signaled a more enduring form of attendance and followership, often manifesting in channel subscriptions and the following of release notifications. By giving likes to hobby-related explanatory videos, the users wanted to help their favored YouTubers to “get into the trends” (interview 5, female, 14 yrs., grammar school, line 45) or to “support” them (interview 7, female, 15 yrs., grammar school, line 64); a practice that was not reported for school-related videos. Moreover, based on the assumed functioning of the platform and its ‘logic’, likes or dislikes were also a way to indicate preferences and filter forthcoming recommendations and suggested videos.

The young people we surveyed cited similar reasons for commenting (by providing written feedback and/or feedback expressed by emojis), if they did so at all. Videos received comments when they were perceived as funny or particularly well-made, both hobby-related and school-­related. Comments also expressed praise for leisure content and curriculum content perceived as substantive or they served to say thank you when respondents attributed their achievements in school to videos they watched. They were mainly used to provide feedback from the viewers to the producers; respondents seldom considered the possibility of using them to contact other users. The idea of responding with one’s own posts to questions posed by other comments or of entering into an unfolding discussion rarely came up. Likewise, comments were scarcely used to criticize a video.

Overall, commenting was not a common practice. However, the reasons for nonparticipation were different from those for not using the like and dislike features. Our interviewees justified their refusal or inaction with a fear of negative comments that they saw other creators receiving or spreading. “And sure, there is a lot of hate and stuff … There is a lot, a lot, a lot of hate that comes from these videos” (interview 26, trans, 18 yrs, grammar school, line 81). In addition, there were concerns that comments would be noticed at all, and there was an insecurity about giving false information or spreading unwarranted information. In that respect, the perceived antagonistic communicative mood of the platform prevented further engagement (Reagle, 2015). This situation demonstrates the consequences for reducing the likelihood of participation that online incivility and aggression have on young people (Livingstone & Blum-Ross, 2020). In contrast to other studies, however, we observed no gender-specific differences, although the small sample here hardly allows for further conclusions.

Concerns about negative reactions were also a determining factor in young people not posting videos. Respondents viewed the publicity that videos enabled with ambivalence; it could propel users into a wider sphere of attention and recognition, yet the feedback was anticipated to be dismissive and impossible to control. The reluctance to use YouTube was also framed as a stage in their media biography and an element of their increasing and more versatile media literacy—­respondents had ceased their initially playful experimentation with the platform’s features and erased the traces. Several adolescents stated that they had made videos earlier in their lives (mostly at the age of 11 or 12) with the then available technology (smartphone cameras) and had uploaded them to YouTube. However, in retrospect, and in light of the viewing experiences they had gained in the meantime and the expectations projected on them by peers, parents, or educators, they had rejected these early productions as inadequate in design, content, or technology, and removed them. Holger explained: 

“… I also once wanted to start a YouTube channel when I was still 11 or 12, and that was also with another cousin of mine. We wanted to open a YouTube channel. And then we also had a channel name. Also, a profile picture, which I edited myself. And we uploaded videos on it for a week or so … Yes. Yeah, that was kind of a stupid idea, but—I don’t know. I was still small.” (interview 19, male, 17 yrs., grammar school, lines 75–77)

At the same time, the growing awareness and appreciation of YouTube content gave rise to increased expectations of the adolescents’ own potential participation, which seemed ultimately unrealizable given their equipment, their time to hand, and their existing level of knowledge or expertise. Opportunities to post videos were also not taken, because the adolescents had the impression that many good videos were already available, and that there was neither a niche for their own participation nor any chance of success in generating attention and reaching a significant number of viewers. The failure to take advantage of the possibilities for creating and distributing videos was thus based on the fear of doing something wrong and a lack of confidence in their skills and knowledge, due to an unattainable perfectionism and concerns about hostile publicity.

In cases in which young people did produce videos, these were only shared privately or published on other websites apart from YouTube, such as the school homepage. In addition, decisions about the form and the degree to which they would become active were platform dependent. Hence, the low use of YouTube’s affordances to actively post content did not mean that the pupils did not create and share videos. Whereas respondents primarily consumed YouTube content, they uploaded, commented on, rated and shared content for other applications. Instagram and TikTok were particularly prominent platforms for posting content during the survey period, while Snapchat or WhatsApp were used to address more finite circles of friends and family. These services were preferred to YouTube because of the perceived “coolness” of the offerings, the adjustable audience and reach of posts, the assumed lower expectations of professionality, and the limited circulation of the content.

Exchange and engagement: Co-viewing and collectively viewing explanatory videos

The extent to which explanatory videos were viewed together—at the same time and in the same space as a kind of co-viewing—depended strongly on whether the interviewees placed them in the context of school requirements and tasks or in the context of leisure activities (RQ2). In general, if they associated the content with curricular topics and preparation for exams, videos were rarely viewed together with other people, and if co-viewing happened, the videos were rarely viewed with peers (for example, as teamwork), but more often with parents, as part of school lessons, or as part of homeschooling during COVID-19 lockdowns. In the latter case, time-coordinated co-viewing with people in different places occurred, rather than co-viewing with others being physically co-present. This form of co-viewing in a shared moment, but not a shared place, may in part be due to the social distancing measures but it is also evidence of constant digital networking and swift synchronization that bridges spatial distance. When respondents watched videos together with parents and legal guardians, these were usually male. This imbalance may reflect the gendered nature of school subjects, as the majority of the videos watched for school related to STEM subjects, which still suffer from gender disparities (UNESCO, 2022).

Frequently, adolescents talked about why they avoided viewing explanatory videos for school-related purposes together. In fact, peer relationships were often understood as being unsuitable for the joint watching of YouTube clips, as adolescents wanted to spend their time together differently or because watching them together in a focused way was perceived as too strenuous: “I don’t want to watch YouTube too much with my friends, because you—well, I think you should also do other things,” said Sabrina (interview 7, female, 16 yrs., grammar school, lines 76–78). More importantly, the interviewees mentioned that they did not study together at all, and thus they did not watch explanatory videos together but expected to grasp a subject on their own. In this regard, the fact that they did not study together continued with the reluctance to share or co-view YouTube videos. Tiffany and Ina explained:

“Most of the time, I watch them alone. But … I’ve only ever watched tutorials on my own. You have to understand it yourself somehow in order to give it to others so that they can understand it. That’s why I always do it alone.” (interview 2, female, 16 yrs., high school, line 49)

“Yeah, no. So, in general. I’m not so good with others. So already in school we talk about it or something. But I don’t arrange to meet someone to study, for example, because that doesn’t work anyway.” (interview 9, female, 14 yrs., grammar school, lines 59–60)

Nevertheless, watching explanatory videos together was a common leisure activity—either as a stand-alone activity centered on the pleasure of co-viewing, or in conjunction with mutual hobbies and recreational activities. These two forms of watching were not distinct but usually overlapped; respondents also chose explanatory videos because they were funny or entertaining, and they also watched clips related to their hobby interests and preferences. In the interviews, it became clear that shared reception was a regular part of the friendships many of our respondents cultivated. “Yeah, so when we meet, for example, … then, I don’t know, we talk a little bit. And then one person then opens YouTube and then you actually also ask what you already want to see,” as Fanny described the habit of shared reception (interview 17, female, 18 yrs., grammar school, lines 101–103). Likewise, for some of our respondents, it was part of the preparation for and reflection on the leisure activities they performed. Especially in the training of athletic exercises, YouTube videos were used to retrace movement sequences, procedures, and instructions, and to incorporate the knowledge and insights gained from them into their own practice. Here, the videos could serve as a guide, memory aid, and inspiration.

For the young people we interviewed, the practice of watching hobby-related videos together took different forms. It may have happened at one place and at one time, but could also be initiated by sharing a video, mostly via WhatsApp. In the latter case, the viewing of the videos then happened almost synchronously but in spatially distinct places. This cotemporaneous reception not only took place at home, but also in leisure facilities (e.g., riding stables), and less so in schools, because it was often regulated there by restrictions on smart phone use. During the pandemic, temporally synchronous but locally separated watching became the norm, both in terms of hobbies and with respect to homework and preparations for school. Take, for example, Dorit’s and Nathaniel’s statements who were referring to leisure and curriculum activities, respectively:

“So, it’s usually the case that we facetimed via iPad or laptop or something. And then we have on our smart phones. Quasi send us links, a yoga video, or so, that we can all look at it. Then one of us sets on loud, the others all turn to quiet and then we start it, so to speak, try to start it at the same time.” (interview 11, female, 18 yrs., grammar school, lines 88–91)

“That I just watch it with my girlfriend or now during COVID, and then occasionally talk about it on the phone or via Messenger or with friends … Yes, now in the pandemic actually more than before. So, in the past I almost only studied together with friends or something, because I don’t know. It never really worked out that way … but now that we are working from home—but just because it’s so easy.” (interview 15, male, 16 yrs., grammar school, lines 87 and 149)

It further became clear from the interviews that the collective viewing of explanatory videos occurred in connection with other telecommunication services and applications. Smart phones and tablets were not only playback devices for the videos; the respondents also used them to communicate with each other through messenger services and other platforms, and also to access and share content. This convergent practice did not take place as a sequence of individual and timed episodes of use, but rather as a tightly interwoven interplay of local actions and online interactions involving multiple applications and services.

Circulation: Recommending explanatory videos

Generally speaking, respondents frequently shared explanatory YouTube videos and recommended them to others, both in school and during leisure time (RQ3). Viewing of videos related to curricular content and school requirements often happened on an occasion-related basis—if someone knew of a video on a certain topic or when a task had to be completed either individually or in group work—and suitable videos were viewed for the completion of the assignment. Forwarding videos also formed a common and frequently performed activity during leisure time, not only as a stand-alone action, but usually during ongoing communication among peers.

Recommending videos perceived as more or less related to learning and education was a loosely reciprocal practice. Young people shared content without understanding it as a mutual obligation, though back-and-forth exchanges happened among friends and in peer groups. Recommending was mostly done with messenger services such as WhatsApp via forwarded links rather than the YouTube platform. Justification for this usage was provided by Xenia:

“Yes, it’s faster and you don’t have such a sentence—well, with mail you also have such a formatting and everything predefined and the way you write, paragraph, when you put commas and so. That is not so formal on WhatsApp.” (interview 4, female, 17 yrs., technical secondary school, lines 52–54)

Recommendations were sometimes also made casually in conversation or by showing others a video on a smart phone screen. So recommending videos was a common practice (with 105 coded responses in our material) that was part of and accompanied other daily activities. For instance, an interviewee explained how recommendation happens among his peers “when we meet privately, they tell me about it [a video] and then send me the link straight away. Or if we talk something specific, they send me the article or something like that” (interview 18, male, 18 yrs., line 93). Dorit in turn notes that she shares make-up videos “by sending them and by watching them together on a girls’ night or something like that” (interview 11, female, 18 yrs., grammar school, line 49). It was neither reserved for specific times of the day, nor did it represent independent acts unconnected to other activities. Sharing and passing on videos occurred during the course of conversations; when young people came to talk about a topic or a specific video, it happened in relation to everyday activities, or it was an overall expression of adolescents’ media-infused lives. Thus, videos were also recommended to make friends aware of a YouTuber, or in response to being asked how someone had spent his or her evening: by watching YouTube tutorials.

Recommending videos happended in the context of school too, with services such as WhatsApp again playing a major role in forwarding links, both in one-to-one conversations and one-to-many exchanges, such as class group chats. We coded 28 responses where interviewees referred to videos recommended by teachers and 22 responses where they talked about curriculum-related recommendations they received from their peers. Explanatory videos were a frequently shared resource, especially for preparing and following up on classroom material. They were used in class-­related interactions when homework had to be done, when a video was judged to be a particularly helpful resource, and when questions remained unanswered during a lesson. Dorit for example noted the sharing of school-related videos among her fellow students and Sabrina pointed to the mix of videos she either received from her teachers or that she looked up on her own.

“So especially now, for example, if a friend didn’t understand a topic, then I say ‘Yes, watch the video again. I understood that well. Maybe it will help you further.’ So, we already exchange ideas about it.” (interview 11, female, 18 yrs., grammar school, lines 154–155)

“… teachers also use it a lot and give you good videos or you look for yourself so that you can complete tasks.” (interview 7, female, 15 yrs., grammar school, line 33)

It was evident from the interviews that recommendations for videos also came from teachers, and occasionally also from parents or trainers. Young people evaluated these in a nuanced manner. Respondents were critical of cases in which teachers only passed on videos—without giving the impression that they had watched them themselves. If recommendations were part of the teaching of the material and the classroom discussion, then they were viewed positively. The underlying idea was that the explanatory videos should be (optional) supplements, not substitutes to classroom teaching.

Positive or negative attitudes toward explanatory videos also depended on the teachers’ affinity for technology. A wide variety of more or less affirmative or negative attitudes toward YouTube were found in the responses, ranging from examples in which teachers operated their own YouTube channels and uploaded videos to total refusal on the part of the faculty. There were cases in which YouTube content was integrated into lessons or linked to tasks. At the same time, there were cases where students’ demands for video recommendations were rejected; the request was treated as a challenge to pedagogical expertise and as an unnecessary duplication of the lessons offered. On the whole, interviewees saw an increase in the use of YouTube content by teachers during the COVID-19 school closures, with some teachers also turning to creating videos themselves.

Even though adolescents did not discuss the reasons for these different approaches and assessments of their teachers, age was a plausible reason for them; for example, when the new trainee teacher was mentioned as exemplary in the use of YouTube. Equally, however, pupils attributed use or nonuse to teachers’ habitual dispositions and traits; for example, when teachers were believed to have ‘too big an ego’ to use YouTube clips (Friedrichs, 2015). In this regard, Tiffany declared, “so none of them did that. I couldn’t have imagined that either, that they would come down from their ego and then say, ‘Yeah look at you—you can watch these videos there.’ None of them did that” (interview 2, female, 16 yrs, high school, lines 200–201). The schools’ inadequate media technology equipment could also be a reason why video use was not widespread.

Although recommending videos was common practice among young people, not everyone did it with the same intensity. This variation could be due to social insecurities about the reception and assessment of shared content, such as the concern that humor would not be understood or that the content would be irrelevant for others: “Well, you don’t know how other people will react to it, because it’s not so—you have to have the same sense of humor to understand it that way” (interview 2, female, 16 yrs, high school, lines 160–161). There were also technical hurdles, such as when control over end devices or apps was kept by parents.

Communication: Talking about explanatory videos

Of course, young people exchanged their views on YouTube videos. They talked about what they had seen alone or together, either face-to-face or via digital communication services, especially WhatsApp (RQ4). Communication around the viewing and sharing of videos was ­interest-based and dependent on assessments of the quality of the content, the style, or the entertainment value of a contribution. Not every communicative exchange was a conversation in which videos and their ratings were discussed in detail. For most, it was more of a casual, ongoing, intermittent (rather than continuous) engagement with shared videos. Smart phones, in particular, made this practice of continuous—but not necessarily very intensive—exchange possible and ubiquitous. Often, communication also consisted only of emojis or GIFs, which were used to make comments about videos.

However, this kind of low involvement did not exclude the possibility that videos could become the topic of more detailed communicative discussion. In school, this intense engagement was the case when poorly understood learning material was to be covered or repeated with videos. Here, the explanatory videos became components of personal as well as collectively shared learning strategies, in which the audiovisual offerings were a useful resource.

Parents and other family members could also become interlocutors; for example, by validating a personal understanding and as a way of asking questions. Ornella noted:

“And then I either start by looking alone to see if there are any videos on YouTube on the subject, or I usually watch it with my father, and he watches it with me and then explains it to me again. So, then we watch the video, and, in the best-case scenario, I understand it. And he watches along with me and then checks whether I have understood it correctly.” (interview 6, female, 14 yrs., grammar school, line 129)

In the context of leisure activities, more intense communication occurred when videos were closely linked to shared hobbies, or the content of a video met with either high approval or disapproval. The occasions for corresponding video-centered conversations were accordingly diverse and varied depending on the hobby; for example, when an exercise needed to be rehearsed or an IT problem was causing headaches. This communication was not limited to peer groups, but could also involve relevant others, such as coaches and parents.

Discussion and conclusion: Learning apart together

Our study started from the assumption that young people come to engage with explanatory videos on YouTube in interaction and communication that involve different social circles of friends, family, and online acquaintances. Rather than being an isolated task, engaging with explanatory videos should intertwine with their repertoire of mediated communication and make it difficult to distinguish between proper educational uses and tacit kinds of adopting and perfecting skills and getting to know things.

However, our reconstruction of the liking and commenting, co-viewing and collective viewing, mutual recommendations, and communicative exchange that revolve around learning- and education-related content indicates that collective usage of YouTube explanatory videos is scarce. Without question, engagement with videos constitutes a social practice, but these forms of engagement often lack joint activities, and many of the students we spoke to in fact questioned the purpose and value of collective learning. Moreover, the interactive features of the platform were only used to a limited extent, and thus its potential for forming learning collectives, let alone CoPs, was not fully realized. It remains to be seen whether this rudimentary adoption is a shortcoming—and if so, for whom.

The adolescents we studied perceived their interaction with learning- and education-related content on YouTube as part of their media-saturated life. Hence, YouTube videos occupied an important place as a source of information and entertainment for hobbies and as a leisure activity in its own right but did not prompt equal collective engagement with school requirements. This lack of curriculum-focused usage does not necessarily undermine the importance of explanatory videos but may reflect a process of compartmentalization in which such videos have become taken-for-granted, habitual elements in one area of adolescents’ everyday social lives—­leisure—whilst being more absent from another—school (Markham, 2020). Therefore, the compartmentalized ways of dealing with YouTube explanatory videos illustrate both the significance (for leisure) and insignificance (for school) of this source for collective learning. In fact, the students we spoke to perceived YouTube mainly as a platform for accessing videos, but not commonly for posting or communicating with others. Hence, the platform’s affordances, especially those centered on interaction and posting, were oftentimes left untapped. Following the interviews, one reason for this is the students’ sense of publicness of YouTube content and the unintentional audiences a video might evoke. Expectations of relevance and quality coupled with concerns about negative reactions made them refrain from a more active participation. This is not to say that students were in general not posting videos or communicating via social media. Quite the contrary. Yet all of them preferred the more close-knit circles of WhatsApp and Snapchap to share content. As such, the services played an important role in recommending YouTube videos, too.

In effect, YouTube forms part of the students’ rich media repertoire which they employ selectively. In this entanglement, YouTube explanatory videos are a main resource for adolescents’ informal learning practices that are to a limited extent collective. The platform not only provides diversion and entertainment but has also become an elemental part of the acquisition of knowledge and skills. As such, it should receive attention in areas of formal teaching and have a place in the study of adolescent self-directed learning more broadly. Greenhow and Lewin (2016) have acknowledged that “educators and educational researchers might do well to suspend a rush to judgment that young people’s leisure time, social media practices are necessarily a waste of time or downright harmful to their becoming informed, literate, and engaged citizens” (p. 24). In turn, they advocate for a “greater understanding of how young people’s participatory media practices in third spaces between formal schooling and home might be designed” (p. 24). Regarding the creation of such third spaces, Duncum (2011) has argued that these must appreciate the achievements and efforts of young people active on platforms like YouTube. They should furthermore support the teaching of skills on how to use these services and create content while also being aware of the potential risks involved. And they need to promote critical media literacy with regard to the conditions and algorithmic operations of the platform (Sander, 2020).

The necessary turn to the capacities of young people for self-directed and informal peer education and the third spaces outside of teaching institutions becomes all the more pressing and self-evident in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The global lockdown of schools required teachers and pupils to move online and explore avenues for teaching and learning, and it required this shift far more quickly than many administrative responses to the crisis could provide. In that respect, focusing on only one platform, as we did, narrows our view because it fails to appreciate that informal learning often occurs across different media services and applications. For that reason, James and Busher (2013) refer to a “mediascape” (p. 205) in their ethnographic study of hybrid learning communities and in future research it is necessary to pay more attention to the cross-media practices and media repertoires of networked learning (Ito et al., 2010; Livingstone & Sefton-Green, 2016; Thomas & Brown, 2011; Wolf & Wudarski, 2017)

What also becomes evident from our interviews is that using learning- and education-related content on YouTube is by no means a smooth affair. On the contrary, young people encounter a whole range of challenges. Lange (2018) cites “the vulnerabilities of learning in public, experiencing challenges to identity formation, dealing with harassment and negative feedback, and uncertainty in assessing the mentors’ abilities and the learners’ progress.” What is more, YouTube is by no means a neutral intermediary between producers and users; the platform and the commercial goals it pursues fundamentally shape the possibilities for uploading and showing, rejecting, and valuing content. At worst, they pave the way for the exploitation of youth creativity and participation (Nguyen, 2021). The service structures user interaction and communication, often in conjunction with other platforms and applications. Alternatives exist, but currently, young people experience the platform not as an obstacle, but as a useful resource for geeking out.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science (BMBF) under Grant 01JD1804.