According to UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers, the kids are over it. “It” being fake, flashy, sex-obsessed content that doesn’t feel anything like their lives.
The center’s annual Teens & Screens report, titled “Get Real: Relatability on Demand,” dropped Wednesday. In it, they surveyed 1,500 Americans aged 10 to 24 about what they actually want from the media they consume. Spoiler: It’s not influencer drama or $500 million mansions.
Let’s start with the biggest shocker: Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren’t glued to TikTok the way you might think. In fact, 57 percent of respondents said they watch TV and movies more than older generations realize, and 53 percent said they discuss shows and movies with friends more often than social media content.
When it’s hangout time, 31.2 percent of teens would rather watch a movie with friends than scroll together.
“I think because of the very brief length of the content, the short form videos/memes can tire out really quickly and become something annoying/cringey versus something worth talking about with friends,” an 18-year-old woman from California who took part in the survey said.
When it comes to the kinds of stories they want to see on their screens, relatability is at the center. The survey found that teens are tired of fantasy escapism and want characters who actually resemble them and their lives. Support for “relatable stories” category jumped to 32.7 percent this year
“If the situations are too over-the-top or the characters only care about popularity or romance, it's harder for me to relate or care about the story,” a 13-year-old boy from Michigan said.
“I don't care about the lives of the rich or famous. There needs to be more representation for people in lower/middle classes. I don't care that someone has a 500 million dollar house and they hate their spouse and children," another participant said.
The survey also found that it’s kind of dead for romance, too. About 59.7 percent said they’d rather see friendships take center stage, while 54.9 percent want different-gendered characters to just stay friends.
"If it's [friendship between] two girls, I see that all the time,” an 18-year-old woman from New Jersey said. “But friendship between a girl and a boy that doesn't end up evolving into a romantic relationship? Every single friendship I've seen between a girl and a boy, they end up getting together.”
Of the study’s participants, 48.4 percent said there is “too much sex and sexual content in TV and movies.”
Love triangles are also out.
"[Love triangles] often feels forced and makes characters act unrealistically just to create drama," a 13-year-old girl from Illinois said.
And, as one 17-year-old from Arizona summed up, “I think that romance in general is starting to feel very over-done... there’s a lot of under-explored potential for complexity in platonic relationships too.”
