Boomer vs. Gen Z: These Are the Most Popular Subscription Services by Generation

Food, shelter, and streaming: The basic necessities. We joke, but it's not too far off base, since 96% of adults have at least one video-streaming service, according to WeThrift.com.

In a survey of 1,030 adults of varying ages, 80% had a music-streaming subscription, followed by meal-kit delivery services at 57%; beauty, health, and wellness at 51%; and whatever miscellaneous subscriptions didn't fit a neat category at 56% (think Stitch Fix and VPNs).

When split by generations, boomers prefer Amazon Prime Video and iHeartRadio for streaming; millennials like a Hulu-and-Spotify combo; and Gen Z is into Apple TV+ and Amazon Music Unlimited (feels weird, but I'll allow it).

Most "popular" doesn't equal "most subscribed to," however. Interestingly, the video-streaming service with the most subscribers across all ages was Prime Video—but that's probably because it goes hand-in-hand with a Prime subscription for shopping, among other features. Overall, it was Prime Video at 72%, Netflix at 62%, Disney+ at 43%, Hulu at 34%, and HBO Max at 24%. The top combo for video streaming was Netflix plus Prime Video, for 48% of all respondents.

most popular subscriptions by generation

The report also breaks out the music services with the most subscribers (Amazon Music Unlimited tops Spotify at 39% versus 35%, respectively), food subs (Blue Apron barely wins at 17%), and health, beauty, and wellness (BeautyFIX at 14%). As for "miscellaneous," the dogs have it: BarkBox's 14% subscription rate was just ahead of CyberGhost VPN at 13%.

The scary part is how much we all spend, according to the chart below. (And the pricing is based on the base subscription plan for each service, so we're probably paying even more.)

Food is the most costly subscription, period. But you gotta eat. What's interesting is that the average $242 per month across all services is higher than that of the older generations, while the Gen Z crowd is spending $135 more than that per month on average, for a total of $377 per month ($4,524 per year). They don't spend much more for video and music but almost double their costs for the other subscriptions they stack on.

You can read more details with the generational breakdowns, top pairings, and measures on the growth of subscriptions, in the full report at WeThrift.com.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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