Gen Z audiences prefer stories about platonic friendship to those about sex and romance
- Film and TV producers could be making more stories about friendship to cater to the tastes of Gen Z viewers, the world’s most lonely people
Gen Z is lonelier than previous generations, and that could present opportunities for Hollywood.
Social scientists say people born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, a cohort who grew up communicating digitally, is more socially isolated than older generations thanks to the double whammy of the Covid-19 pandemic and social media supplanting in-person connection.
Last year, the World Health Organization deemed loneliness to be a pressing global health threat.
Entertainment companies and researchers are trying to learn more about how this generational trend is changing young people’s tastes and preferences in media.
The University of California Los Angeles’ 2023 Teens & Screens study found that people aged 10 to 24 wanted to see more platonic relationships between on-screen characters, and were not as interested in media that portrayed romantic entanglements and sex.
