streaming videos on youtube and downloading them..... which consumes more data ??

Is this even a question? Believe me, try streaming a movie and you would know what I am talking about

Stream if you have unlimited broadband bandwidth or download if you have the not so unlimited data

Streaming is for developed world where what they pay for data is nothing to their income,besides it being unlimited.As a Nigeria after streaming and you need the video the next day,you will go and stream again right? with what data plan? after downloads you will have it for ever,give it to people.Example when i was serving 3yrs ago,i collected a lot of stuff from others that i still have on a drive today,also gave others stuff,that woudnt have been possible if all i do is stream.Except for certain occassions where its necessary,streaming to me is a waste of MB as a Naijarian

It's roughly the same amount of data consumed

When you are streaming a video, your computer is requesting packet files from the server that hosts those videos. Each packet transferred over the wire to your computer is eventually what makes up your video.

So e.g. let's assume the video you are streaming is 100mb, A plethora (and I mean a huge amount of data will be processed). Packets known as MTUs will be sent at around 1500 bytes of data until the entire movie is streamed out. So to answer your question, downloading a file and streaming it makes no difference. The amount of data used is exactly the same. In many cases it's actually better to download it because what if you want to watch that exact same file more than once? If it is not stored in your cache, you will have to re-stream it.

The question you should be asking is the difference in streaming something at Low-Quality vs. streaming it in Mid, High or Very High Quality (i.e. 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, 4K, etc.) The higher quality of the video, the more data you will consume when attempting to stream or download it.

There is more risk in Downloading a file than streaming them.

mrZENographer:
There is more risk in Downloading a file than streaming them.

Not from YouTube