The role of video streaming service usage in Generation Z’s understanding of entertainment

This article explores Generation Z’s understanding of entertainment through the connection between video streaming service use and fun. The proliferation of media entertainment tools designed for personal consumption has multifaceted implications, alienating entertainment from its social aspect. The rising popularity of video streaming services largely reshapes entertainment by disconnecting it from the conventional viewing experience. Through semi-structured in-depth interviews with samples from Generation Z, this study examines the traces of this transformation. Research findings reveal that Generation Z participants have developed three ways to have fun through video streaming services. These are simultaneous viewing together, watching together by downloading add-ons from different screens and solo viewing that later becomes a topic of discussion during friends’ gatherings. This research interprets the use of video streaming services for fun as direct experience, indirect experience and postponed experience, and it holds potential for contributing to communication studies.