Nineteen years of ASMR on YouTube: A multilingual, theme-level analysis of 52,002 videos

Alam, M. S., Bazilinskyy, P.

Submitted for publication.

ABSTRACT Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos use whispered speech, gentle sounds, and close-up attention to promote relaxation, yet longitudinal, large-scale descriptions are scarce. We analyse 52,002 ASMR YouTube videos (1 Jan 2008-6 Feb 2026; metadata updated 15 Feb 2026) from 11,529 channels in 36 languages. Using title/description text mining with duration, engagement, and growth metrics, we quantify long-term trends and content niches. Mean growth was 1,791 views/day (SD 22,271) and varied strongly by format and language. Short videos (under 10 min) grew fastest on average (3,432 views/day), mid-length videos (10-30 min) slower (917), and very long videos (over 180 min) rebounded (2,024), consistent with spe-cialised formats such as sleep streams. Common themes included drive (15.9%), sleep (16.3%), visual/hand triggers (14.8%), and role-play (13.0%), alongside whisper (10.0%) and binaural audio (7.5%). K-means clustering identified 11 content clus-ters, separating mainstream English mid-length ASMR from long-form sleep content and rapid-growth outliers.