Begone the days of 30-year-olds playing high schoolers! Gen Z and Gen Alpha want to see themselves depicted accurately on screen.
A study from the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA found that young viewers are often not consulted about what they want to see on screen — even in projects about and for them. Over the past five years, CSS’s annual Teens and Screens Report has worked to change that by providing data about what young people really want to see.
The 2026 report reveals a broad definition of what a “story” is and where to find it, coupled with an appetite for traditional media and in-person experiences. This year’s study surveyed more than 1,500 adolescents aged 10-24.
Among the interesting findings:
- YouTube (72.9%) ranked as the top medium for storytelling, with nearly four out of five respondents saying that short-term videos can tell a story.
- 16.8% said they would not cast an influencer in a project, while almost 40% said they would most prefer to cast an unknown actor.
- Gen Alpha and Gen Z are split on AI: 27.4% of respondents at age 19 identified “doom” as their dominant emotion toward its portrayals in media, while 44.2% of 10 to 13-year-olds described it as “fascinating.”
- 55% want to see more neurodivergent characters on screen.
- Friendship is key: 57.3% want to see more platonic relationships represented.
“Adults are making stories that they think are going to resonate with young people, but they’re not really talking to a lot of young people to do it,” CSS founder and CEO Yalda T. Uhls, Ph.D., tells Variety about the findings. Uhls is a professor in UCLA’s psychology department who spent nearly two decades as a senior executive at studios like MGM and Sony before pivoting to psychology research of media and young adults.
Since launching the Teens and Screens Report, Uhls has seen industry executives and researchers make a concerted effort to integrate the study’s findings. Uhls highlights that individuals from across the industry at CAA, Disney and UTA will attend a summit on Oct. 22 to listen and inform their work.
“Our assumptions based on what we thought were stories when we were younger can’t hold,” Uhls says. “They’re not holding, and we need to really talk to young people, do research like this to make sure that these stories are everywhere and they’re consuming it all the time. Make sure that hopefully, if the people we work with that are in the industry — who have the real cultural power, they’re the ones making content that goes all over the world — if they’re really paying attention to our work about what young people need and want and care about, they’re gonna not only probably make content that will resonate and that these young people will see more, but also, it’ll just hopefully create a more empathetic and kind world.”
In her work with CSS and the study, Uhls challenges her gut instincts on young people’s take on entertainment. She was surprised to hear participants say they think short-form content like Instagram Reels can tell stories.
“So many adults look down on this medium,” Uhls says, but younger audiences “see stories everywhere. They see media. They’re looking for something that they can relate to that resonates with them. And if they don’t see it in a traditional piece of content storytelling in TV, books or movies, they’re going to go elsewhere, and they are going elsewhere.”
Uhls describes these young audiences as “way more discerning” than executives might realize. “They like to discover someone new, but yet at the same time, with ‘Obsession’ and ‘Backrooms,’ there’s a different kind of storytelling that’s learned on YouTube really, and maybe TikTok and other things too. So, from a filmmaker perspective, it’s not that they want the stories on those platforms to be translated into mainstream content, but certainly the style and the thinking of their issues and what they do seems to be something Gen Z loves.”
But this group Uhls surveys isn’t monolithic, something she stresses is important to remember. She recalls working on her dissertation and realizing that assumptions based only on Los Angeles teens did not ring true across the country. She has two things she hopes executives take away from the study’s findings: “Listening to young people and diverse young people from all over the country is one. And then the second thing is they’re way more nuanced than we give them credit for. They’re way more sophisticated than we give them credit for. Sometimes they say really wise and brilliant things.”
CSS will host its sixth annual Teens & Screens Summit on Oct. 22 at the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center. The event features panels and discussions with industry leaders, researchers and youth activists. Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground Productions will be honored with CSS’s second annual Greg Berlanti Social Impact Award at the event.