Teens Now Look For ‘Community’ Through Content They Consume

Storytelling has been part of society for millennia, from fables and myths to down-to-earth, relatable tales. Lately, teens have been getting into more relatable stories.

Adolescents have taken to focusing on stories that resonate with them, not content with the same old thing. This is even more true for celebrities they’ve seen time and again, according to the Center for Scholars & Storytellers, which conducted the study.

“I think they’re really looking for community, but there’s just never enough content that they love, which is part of the thing we’re trying to get across to Hollywood, ” Yalda T. Uhls, who is a UCLA developmental psychology clinical professor and former filmmaker, told Forbes.

Gen Z now wants to see on-screen characters who aren’t the kids of development executives, generic focus groups, or the uber-rich, disconnected people.

Given the sheer variety of content at their disposal, films have to stand out in order to compete with other media telling stories that relate to them. Everything from TikTok to books has the ability to capture their attention. Adolescents crave new and exciting content.

Uhls also noted, “You can see, especially as they get older, they like to discover someone.” However, there was also the flip side.

“But part of the problem is that all those film executives are more risk-averse than ever. So they’re going to (cast) the guy that’s been in a couple of things that have done pretty well,” Uhls continued.

This leads to adolescents wanting the new, but executives trying to play it safe, going with those that are very well established and known. A spiraling loop trying harder and harder to capture an audience less and less interested.

While companies have tried to get influencers or less orthodox celebrities to engage consumers, those haven’t been massively successful either. People have seen that their inclusion was for ticket sales and will not fall for it. This doesn’t mean that having stars is a death sentence for a movie.

Ken Parsons took his web series on the backrooms and translated it to the big screen. The lesson being not that studios should be scraping the internet solely for stories and then hire the most well-known A-list celebrities, but rather to speak to them differently.

These two have made their careers out of engaging with the youth, and so, better understand them than studios who are looking in from the outside.

Even Obsession, which was more traditional than those two films, managed to be so popular that just a location being connected to it has seen a flurry of activity.