Teens want movies and shows to stay in the friend zone.
Movies like Baby Girl, Poor Things, and Fair Play, as well as franchises like Disclaimer and Tell Me Rise, are becoming more sexually explicit. , young viewers want to see more Hollywood stars dressed on screen. That the entertainment industry focuses on characters who have platonic relationships. That’s one of the key findings from a new study conducted by the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at the University of California, Los Angeles. The report, titled “Teens and Screens,” surveyed approximately 1,500 respondents between the ages of 10 and 24.
Researchers found that 63.5% of adolescents said they preferred stories in movies big and small that focused on friendship, and 62.4% said they didn’t need sexual content as a component of the story. This is a big jump from the previous year, when 51.5% of those surveyed said they wanted more content about people in platonic relationships and 47.5% said they didn’t want shows or movies where sex was a major plot point. rose. The survey did not survey respondents between the ages of 10 and 13 about their attitudes toward sexually explicit content.
“Our findings seemed to confirm trends revealed in last year’s data: Young people are increasingly attracted to the same outdated and unrelatable romantics,” said Alisha J. Hines, director of research at the center. “The metaphor is that we’re tired of seeing it on screen.” “Teenagers and young adults want to see stories that more faithfully reflect all the nuanced relationships.”
Instead, 36.2% of adolescents prefer fantasy worlds to stories about the rich and famous (7.2%), real-life issues (13.9%), personal issues (24.2%), or other genres (3.3%). I answered that I enjoyed the content that happens in . And when it comes to their favorite type of entertainment, 39.2% of teens chose video games, compared to 33.3% who chose watching TV or movies, and scrolling on social media platforms. It was 27.5%.
When it comes to digital forms of entertainment, 38.8% of adolescents say YouTube is the “most authentic” social media platform, followed by TikTok (36.3%), Instagram (28.3%), and X (formerly known as Twitter). known) was the lowest. 18.1% of respondents endorsed it as authentic.
Erotic films were once a popular genre, with films such as “An Indecent Proposal” and “Instinct” topping the box office charts. But after those movies faded and TV shows like “Game of Thrones” and “The Affair” became more permissive, Hollywood invested less in explicit content. That seems to be changing in recent months, with an onslaught of more sexually provocative content hitting our screens. But it seems like these movies and shows need to appeal to older viewers, at least if the research is to be believed.
