When turning to TV and film, adolescent audiences yearn to escape into fantasy worlds and uplifting content. That’s one of the key findings of the 2024 Teens and Screens Report from UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers.
The research team surveyed 1,644 US 10- to 24-year-olds in August, including 437 pre-teens (ages 10 to 13) and 440 teens (14 to 17). Funders for Adolescent Science Translation, Roblox and Disney financed the survey.
Last year’s report generated lots of buzz over teens’ interest in “nomance”—content focusing on friendship, with less emphasis on outdated romantic tropes—a trend that continues to grow in popularity among this demo. Roughly 64% of teens favored nomance-related stories this year, up from 55% in 2023.
But the biggest spike in demand was for content involving fantasy worlds, with roughly 50% of pre-teens and 34.5% of teens preferring this genre over other options (such as stories about real-life issues, relatable themes or rich/famous people). Those numbers jumped significantly from last year’s report, where just 19.5% of the younger set and 25.3% of the teen demo favored fantasy content.
This craving for “nomantasy” (nomance and fantasy) is accompanied by a strong interest in “hopeful, uplifting content with people beating the odds.” That type of feel-good content ranked first on adolescents’ wishlist for what they’d like to see on screen, beating out 20 other topics/themes including superheroes, action, dystopia, relatable characters, mental health and family life.
These preferences are a result of today’s youth undergoing “crisis fatigue” due to stress factors like COVID-19 and the 24-hour news cycle, says CSS founder/director and report co-author Yalda T. Uhls.
“This generation cares deeply about many social issues, but they also need a break mentally,” says Uhls, who is an adjunct professor in UCLA’s psychology department. “It makes sense that we see many of them looking to the media for fantasy and stories with messages of hope, to get relief from the many challenges that come with the reality of being a young person today.”
In what should be promising news for the industry, the report also debunks claims that young audiences don’t care about going to movie theaters. In fact, going to see a movie during opening weekend ranked as the first choice activity (if money was no object) for 10- to 24-year-olds, with attending a concert and playing a newly released video game rounding out the top three. Streaming a new movie premiere on a device ranked fourth on the list.
When the research team quizzed a segment of respondents on what format they favor, live action (58%) edged out animation (42%), but there’s still plenty of love for both among young audiences.
The team also added gaming to the survey questions for the first time this year, and the results confirmed that this is the most popular leisure activity for nearly 40% of adolescents. But there’s room for improvement in representation, with a majority of respondents (roughly 84.6% of pre-teens and 77.7% of teens) wanting to see characters that look more like them.
While teens’ love for social media is certainly no surprise, producers might need to rethink how socials are portrayed in film and TV—nearly 46.8% of this age group said they cringe at on-screen portrayals of social media. Breaking it down by platforms, YouTube ranked as the most authentic platform (38.8%), beating out TikTok (36.3%), which took last year’s top spot.
The full Teens & Screens report is available for download on the Scholars and Storytellers website.
Pictured: PG-13 fantasy feature Damsel, which became the most-watched film on Netflix in the first half of this year with 143.8 million views.