New data shows Gen Alpha and Gen Z spending more time inside games, even as media strategies remain anchored to feeds.
(Roblox)
Much of the marketing conversation still revolves around feeds. Scroll behavior, short-form video and the fight to hold attention for a few seconds at a time continue to dominate planning decks. At the same time, a significant portion of Gen Alpha and Gen Z is spending hours in a very different kind of environment, one that still sits awkwardly outside many media plans.
According to a new report from Gamefam, Roblox now accounts for more daily time spent among younger users than major social platforms. Average daily usage on Roblox stands at 2.7 hours, exceeding time spent on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Daily active users have increased sharply year over year and peak concurrent usage now rivals or surpasses that of other major gaming platforms.
That acceleration caught even industry insiders off guard. Joe Ferencz, founder and chief executive of Gamefam, said the platform’s growth exceeded expectations as viral games began stacking on top of one another throughout the year. “Entering the year, Roblox’s growth had been steady,” he said. “But 2025 elevated the platform to new heights as new daily usage milestones were hit quarter after quarter.”
The scale is hard to ignore, but the more revealing detail is how often Roblox remains categorized as something other than media. Despite sustained daily usage that outpaces major social platforms, it is frequently treated as gaming, youth culture or experimental innovation rather than a core channel. That classification gap has direct implications for how budgets are allocated and how success is measured.
The report documents a corresponding rise in brand activity. More than 210 brands activated on Roblox in 2025, spanning media, entertainment, toys, fashion and sports. Campaigns ranged from standalone branded games to integrations within existing titles that already attract large audiences. Ferencz noted that many of the most effective executions met audiences where they already were. “Roblox is not just where young players are gaming,” he said. “It’s the go-to place where they spend social and leisure time.”
What differentiates Roblox from traditional social environments is both scale and structure. Time on the platform is typically spent inside persistent games and shared worlds rather than moving rapidly between posts. Players return to the same environments repeatedly, interacting with familiar mechanics and communities. From a measurement perspective, this results in longer sessions and repeated exposure within a single experience rather than brief impressions distributed across multiple placements.
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The report also points to a broader pattern around how brands are entering the platform. Integrations within established games tend to offer faster access to large audiences than standalone branded worlds, particularly when tied to entertainment, sports or music moments. As Ferencz put it: “The most efficient way for most brands to come on to the platform is by integrating into already-popular games, which offer massive scale from the first day of a campaign.”
Roblox’s influence extends beyond the platform itself. Games that gain traction often generate related content across video and social platforms, contributing to broader visibility. Roblox-related content has now surpassed one trillion lifetime views on YouTube, placing it among the most-watched gaming ecosystems on the platform.
If younger audiences are spending multiple hours a day inside environments built around participation rather than scrolling, media strategies centered primarily on feeds risk missing where attention consolidates.
While the report does not suggest that social platforms are losing relevance, it does highlight how attention among Gen Alpha and Gen Z is spread across formats that behave very differently. As Ferencz noted, brands that continue to treat Roblox as peripheral risk misunderstanding how younger audiences now divide their time, particularly as those audiences age up alongside the platform itself.