Gen Z’s box office wish

Kelsey Mann, the 50-year-old director of Inside Out 2, needed help dialing into the complex emotions of his film’s 13-year-old protagonist, Riley. So he enlisted a panel of experts: nine teenage girls from across the country, who became known as “Riley’s crew.” Their job? To provide insight into the challenges that accompany puberty and ensure the movie’s story felt, as Mann put it, “authentic and real.”

The animated film became the highest-­grossing movie of 2024, appealing to audiences of all ages. But its portrayal of Riley as she navigated changing friend groups and endured her first anxiety attack especially resonated with adolescents.

That’s because young people prefer entertainment that reflects their life experiences, according to a recent survey from the University of California, Los Angeles. That includes media content focusing on platonic relationships and friendships—not romance and sex. The study, “Teens & Screens,” surveyed 1,644 young people between ages 10 and 24. About 63% said they wanted to see less sexual content, up from roughly 51% in 2023. (Kids aged 10 to 13 did not answer questions about romance and sex.)

But young people’s watching habits don’t always match their preferences, sending Hollywood storytellers mixed messages. Will they give viewers more of what they say they want, or more of the same?

“The industry can easily get caught up on what worked in the past,” said Tom Halleen, dean of the Snyder School of Cinema and Media Arts at Biola University. “If we want to keep adolescents engaged, perhaps we should consider that they see the world differently because of their experiences, which are distinct from the ones we grew up with.”

Today, young people spend up to nine hours a day on screens outside of school, according to the UCLA study. Nearly 80% report frequent social media use, according to a 2023 survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than a third of those surveyed in the UCLA study described social media as the “most authentic” media outlet. YouTube topped their list of preferred social media platforms. But they don’t like how social media is portrayed in movies and TV shows—in fact, it makes them cringe.

Early on in Inside Out 2, Riley’s camp hockey coach snags her phone. That sidelines two of the major factors influencing teens today—smartphones and social media—allowing the movie’s appeal to come from Riley’s relatable experiences “told in a fantasy way,” said Joseph Holmes, a filmmaker and film critic.

UCLA study participants still rank going to the movie theater as their favorite weekend activity. Their favorite genre is fantasy, up 16% from last year, with “relatable issues” coming in second. For the third consecutive year, the participants said they disliked stories about the rich and famous.

Riley (left) with her friends Bree and Grace in Inside Out 2. Disney/Pixar

Gen Zers, those born between 1997 and 2012, increasingly look to movies and TV shows as an escape, said one of the study’s authors, Yalda T. Uhls, the founder and CEO of the Center for Scholars & Storytelling. “The real world is overwhelming,” she told The New York Times.

Meanwhile, young people are engaging in less sex and other risky behavior. Among U.S. high school students, 30% reported having sexual intercourse in 2021, down from more than half three decades ago, the CDC found. They’re also waiting longer to marry and have kids.

“They are defining themselves far more through friendships than romantic relationships, so it makes sense that they want to see that represented on screen,” said Houston Coley, 24, a documentary filmmaker, writer, and voice actor in Nashville, Tenn. Coley got his start at age 11 with a YouTube channel where he posted Lego animation videos.

Several of last year’s hit movies appealed to young people’s appetite for platonic relationships, including the cultural phenomenon Wicked. “It’s a story almost completely focused on female friendship,” Coley told me. Similarly, Marvel’s 2024 R-rated hit Deadpool & Wolverine depicts two superheroes forming an unlikely friendship.

Still, what teens say they want doesn’t always match up with what they end up watching. The glossy legal drama Suits, one of the most streamed TV shows of 2023, contained plenty of sexual content and innuendo. But it attracted a “surprisingly robust fan base among Generation Z,” Slate senior editor Sam Adams wrote. The wildly popular teen drama Outer Banks on Netflix involves more than platonic relationships. Other degenerate movies such as Poor Things and All of Us Strangers attracted largely younger audiences.

Holmes argues the dichotomy is partly because Generation Z is “a mess of contradictions.” He believes some of the participants’ responses in the UCLA survey could be performative. Even if young people say they are only interested in friendships, “they’re human and so there’s still going to be that magnetism toward romantic relationships.”

When asked what topics they most want to see, study participants ranked “hopeful uplifting content” the highest, with action scenes and “people with lives like my own” next on the list of preferences. Tied for last on the list of 21 options were “partying and/or drugs and drinking” and “non-binary and LGBTQIA+ identities.”

Biola University’s Halleen sees this as a positive takeaway: “If this is truly a reflection of a generation, do we have the courage to listen?”