Teen Snapshot — December 2024
2024 Youth Media Preferences Fantasy, Nostalgia, Movies, and More
This survey is part of CSS's regular Teen Snapshot series, which are quick pulses on young people's media tastes, interests, and opinions about current events. Learn more here.
Key Takeaways
Romance Losing it’s Spark: Out of over 600 youth respondents, not one reported a desire for romance content in TV or movies.
Fantasy Rising: Young people report being obsessed with fantasy content above all other genres, at more than double the rate of the second place genre (drama) for movies.
Y2K Nostalgia: More than half of adolescents (55.3%) report watching older shows, in line with a larger trend of young people feeling nostalgic for the 90’s and early 2000’s.
Movies Still Matter: When asked what content they were looking forward to being released this year, movie titles were reported most frequently (above video games and TV shows).
We surveyed a diverse sample of 606 adolescents between the ages of 16-24 across the United States to find out what young people are watching and looking forward to in the media. These findings further confirmed the results of this year’s 2024 Teens and Screens report, which showed young people still care about movies and are increasingly interested in fantasy content while increasingly disinterested in romance. The results also revealed that young people are still interested in watching many shows from the 90’s and early 2000’s.
Fantasy & Friendship Trending
We asked participants what titles they’ve been obsessed with watching lately, which were then organized into genre categories by a team of raters. In both TV and movies, fantasy content came out on top. This finding aligns with what we found in our 2024 Teens and Screens report, where adolescents said they most like to watch TV shows and/or movies about fantasy worlds.
Out of our 606 participants, none reported “romance” as a genre they were obsessed with, in the case of TV or movies. This further illustrates the continued trend we’ve found in our data towards “nomance” content. Despite the old adage that “sex sells,” young people continue to report more interest in seeing friendship and nuanced relationships on-screen than explicit content with played out romantic tropes.
In our 2024 Teens and Screens Report:
Fantasy content saw a significant boost in popularity, with 36.2% of adolescents preferring this genre — a 56% increase from last year
63.5% of adolescents expressed a preference for stories focused on friendships and platonic relationships (and 62.4% said sex and sexual content is not needed to advance the plot of TV shows and/or movies)
Hitting Rewind: Y2K is Back
In our survey, 55.3% of adolescents reported watching TV shows that first aired before they turned 10 years old. This preference for content from the 90’s and early 2000’s is consistent with Gen Z’s wider embrace of Y2K trends and fashion — and both millennials’ and Gen Z’s ongoing preference for nostalgic content (with one study showing over a third of Gen Z are nostalgic for the 90’s despite being born in the 2000’s. The finding is also in line with NRG’s study released earlier this year, showing how a combination of nostalgia and comfort seems to be giving older content a boost on streaming platforms.
Movies are Alive and Thriving
When asked what content they are most looking forward to being released this year, movie titles were reported most frequently (above TV shows, video games, and books). This result pushes back against the sentiment that movie theaters are on the outs, and again aligns with our 2024 Teens and Screens finding that showed adolescents choose to see movies above other in-person activities on the weekend when there are no budgetary limitations.
In our 2024 Teens and Screens Report:
When asked to rank activities regardless of time or money, visiting a movie theater was adolescents’ first choice.
🎞️ Go see a movie during opening weekend
🎸 Go to a music concert
🎮 Play a new video game as its released
💻 Stream a movie premiere on my own device as soon as it is released
📺 Binge a new show as its released
⛹️♂️ Attend a live sports event
Overall, these findings strengthen our findings from Teens and Screens 2024, showing that adolescent’s preference for fantasy persists across samples and demographics. We also see that the majority of adolescents are watching older cataloged content, primarily titles including drama, comedy, and animation that may be watched for comfort. Finally, we are seeing that movie releases continue to be the most highly anticipated by youth — even above video games and other forms of media.
Authors
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Atlas Burrus
Research Manager
Atlas Burrus is the lead author of the 2024 Teens and Screens Report and full-time Research Manager at the Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS) at UCLA. In their role at CSS, they oversee data collection, coding and analysis, and they lead regular lab meetings for research fellows and collaborators. Atlas is a passionate advocate for queer representation, friendship, and community, and they received their Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a minor in Education Studies at UCLA.
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Alisha J. Hines, PhD
Research Director
As director of research, Dr. Alisha J. Hines leads the research team and oversees all studies conducted at the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA. She earned her PhD in History & African American Studies from Duke University and is a former faculty member of Wake Forest University's History Department.
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Yalda T. Uhls, MBA, PhD
Founder and CEO
Founder and CEO of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers, Dr. Yalda T. Uhls is an internationally recognized, award-winning research scientist, educator, and author, who specializes in studying how media affects young people. She received her MBA and PhD in developmental psychology from UCLA, is a former movie executive at companies like MGM and Sony, and is a proud Gen Z parent.
Acknowledgements
Thank you so much to Ava Sadat, Phoebe Loew, and Vahe Deverian, the team members of CSS whose contribution to data analysis made this project possible.
To our phenomenal director of marketing, April Cisneros, and designer, Irene Nguyen, who help elevate this project and all at CSS to the next level.
And most of all, to all the youth participants who chose to share their opinions with us here at CSS. We are endlessly grateful for your perspective and insight.
METHODOLOGY
Survey Design
The CSS research team designed a survey to collect data from a diverse sample of adolescents across the country. Consisting of quantitative and qualitative questions, the survey aimed to investigate research questions related to current media interests of adolescents, including movies, tv shows, video games, books, and more.
Participants
The target population for this study was adolescents between the ages of 16-24 from across the United States. A total of 606 participants completed the survey, representing diverse gender, sexuality, and racial/ethnic identities. Survey respondent demographics closely reflected the U.S. Census in terms of race and gender.
Survey Administration and Data Collection
This study was approved by the UCLA Institutional Review Board in July of 2024. The CSS team contracted a third-party survey recruitment platform, Alchemer, to conduct a survey from across the country. Participants were compensated by Alchemer to complete the survey and were provided instructions on how to access and complete the survey online. Participants under the age of 18 were required to have parental/caregiver consent upon participating in the survey. The survey took approximately 5 minutes to complete. Survey responses were collected between August 1 and August 15, 2024.
Limitations
It is important to acknowledge some limitations of this study. As with any self-report questionnaire, there is a possibility of response bias or social desirability bias. Finally, the dataset was not weighted or balanced, meaning some demographic groups might be over- or underrepresented.
Data Analysis
After all data collection was completed, data was cleaned to remove any incomplete or inaccurate responses. Participants self-indicated the type of content they were reporting, with options to choose being TV Show, Movie, Book, Social Media, Video Game, or Other. The cleaned data was additionally coded to reflect the genres of each title reported by participants. A diverse group of several raters used a codebook to select the single most accurate genre for each indicated title. Genres sorted between were Historical, Drama, Fantasy, Sport, Reality, Political, Anime, Drama, Romance, Animation, Crime, Comedy, Documentaries/biography, Sci-Fi, Action, and Horror. This data was then analyzed using the statistical methods software SPSS. Frequencies and crosstabs were calculated to summarize the dataset.