U.S. surveys 2015-2023 show cable and satellite TV falling to about half of households as online audio grew

From November 12 to 18, 2023, Census Bureau interviewers asked households across the United States how they use the internet, in a supplement to the Current Population Survey sponsored by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). NTIA published its first results on June 6, 2024: 83% of people ages 3 and older used the internet in some way in 2023, up from 80% in 2021. NTIA's summary table, which holds its published estimates for every edition of the survey, also tracks how Americans watch, listen and post online, and it is the basis of this page.

Fewer cable bills, more connected screens

The survey asks whether anyone in the household subscribes to cable or satellite TV and tells respondents not to count streaming subscriptions such as Netflix, Sling TV or Hulu. The share saying yes fell with each survey in the table: 72.8% in November 2017, 66.2% in 2019, 58.6% in 2021 and 49.5% in 2023, or about 65.7 million households. By our calculation that is a drop of 23.3 percentage points in six years.

Over the same years, connected screens spread. In 2023, 53.6% of people ages 3 and older, about 171.5 million, used a smart TV, game system or other internet-connected device that plays through a TV, with Apple TV, Xbox and Roku given as examples, up from 27.0% in July 2015. Watching videos over the internet, with YouTube and Netflix as the examples, was reported by 72.8% of internet users ages 15 and older in 2023, close to 2019's 74.3% after a dip to 70.1% in 2021.

Listening, calling and posting

Online audio gained more ground than video over the period, by our comparison. The share of internet users 15 and older who stream or download music, radio programs or podcasts went from 54.4% in 2015 to 62.1% in 2023, about 143.5 million people, with the largest rise in the table between 2019 and 2021. Social network use rose from 70.6% to 76.4%, or about 176.5 million people. Video and voice calling jumped between 2019 and 2021, from 50.8% to 65.6%, and held at 66.1% in 2023.

Creating is a different story. The share of internet users 15 and older who post or upload blog posts, original videos or other content they made, a question that excludes photos and videos taken for personal use and shared to social media, has stayed between 16.7% and 17.0% in every survey since 2017. Because the online population grew, the number of people posting rose from about 35.0 million to 38.8 million.

How the survey works

The Current Population Survey is a monthly labor force survey of about 44,000 interviewed households. In November 2023 the internet supplement collected information on household members ages 3 and older, with answers by another household member allowed, while the questions on online activities went to one randomly selected respondent per household. The survey counts people 15 and older as adults, so the activity shares above are shares of internet users in that age group. For the basic November 2023 survey, the unweighted household nonresponse rate was 29.9%, and the supplement had an additional person-level nonresponse rate of 23.4%.

NTIA publishes a standard error with each estimate, and the Census Bureau uses 90% confidence intervals, 1.645 standard errors either side of an estimate. On that basis, the 2023 cable figure and the 2023 audio figure each carry a margin of about half a percentage point (our calculation), far smaller than the changes since 2015 or 2017. For cable, that range reaches 50.0%, so by our calculation the 2023 share is about half of households rather than clearly below it. NTIA recommends reading the notes in its research center before working with the full datasets.

What applies now

NTIA's datasets page, checked on November 13, 2026, lists November 2023 as the latest edition of the survey, and the summary table we downloaded the same day ends with that edition, so these are the most recent figures in the series. They count people and households, not time spent; for hours in the day, the official source is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' time use survey, covered in our explainer on its 2025 results.