YouTube has almost 2 billion monthly users. This shows that the reliance for the social media platform is huge. With one third of the internet’s users attracted to YouTube and 1 billion hours of content watched everyday, the world has reached an age where people can be informed and entertained simply by a click of the finger.

With about 5 billion videos watched per day, finding a specific video to watch is simple. Not being able to find information on a topic is an issue of the past. Whether it be needing help with homework or seeking entertainment, junior Mason Whitaker takes advantage of the usefulness of YouTube.

“I think YouTube is pretty relevant because I have used it in the past to look things up,” Whitaker said. “I also use it greatly for entertainment whether it be during my free time during school or when I’m trying to go to bed at night. I definitely think it can be helpful in a school setting especially for informational videos the teacher can tell us to use.”

It’s not just students that use YouTube for school, but teachers as well. Educators are tasked with teaching many students with different learning styles. YouTube has helped with that with its immense collection of educational videos. Popular channels among teachers include CrashCourse and TEDx Talks.

“Teachers can assign educational resources that go outside the curriculum that they just don’t have time to cover in class, and there’s a lot of really good educational stuff coming out of there,” social studies teacher Nicholas Wennstedt said. “It’s just another resource that makes other resources accessible. I can look up how to do something that isn’t in a book.”

Transportation, distribution, and logistics (TDL) teacher Mark Anderson uses YouTube to demonstrate to his students information about certain warehouse environments that he doesn’t have access to.

“YouTube has cool videos for my area in particular,” Anderson said. “It’s useful because I teach such a specific content area. It’s not like I can have a edge of dock leveler, loading dock in my room. I don’t have ergonomics equipment in my room, so it’s very useful to be able to show stuff that we’re learning about in class.”

With YouTube, teachers and students alike are able to overcome many different obstacles from learning how to do a math problem to how to use a certain program, making it more of a useful tool instead of just an entertainment website or app that it used to be known as.