Cord Cutting Trends Report: 24% of US Adults Don’t Have a Cable Subscription

All things considered, cord cutting isn’t actually that big of a trend; about 6% of US adults have cancelled their cable subscription, which while certainly noticible if you’re a cable company, doesn’t actually account for that wide of an audience.

However, more interesting, is that there are now 18% of US adults who have never paid for a cable subscription, falling under the trend of “cord-nevers.”

More and more, as young people move out of their parents’ homes, they never sign up for their own cable subscriptions, a trend that has continually expanded with each passing year. As research from Forrester has shown, cord cutting as a trend isn’t growing that rapidly, especially compared to those who just never get their own cable accounts.

It is also reported, while quite obvious, that those who cut the cord stream way more television online. Those who have cable tend to stream far less TV like Netflix, Hulu and other services.

There’s no doubt that younger people are more likely to sign up for streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and Sling, and most find that they can get plenty of entertainment through these options. There are also trends of young people who just take their parents’ cable logins (and sometimes the logins of their friends’ parents) and call it good.

It has gotten a lot easier over the past five years to stream TV online, even with people complaining about the difficulty of streaming sports. There’s no denying that technology has made it easier than ever to get access to the biggest catalog of entertainment ever available.

It will be interesting to see how the cable companies respond to this growing trend of people never signing up for their services. It seems likely that they will make the move towards creating their only “streaming only” options at a considerably discounted rate and we’re already starting to see hints of that.