Young Viewers Say Hollywood Rarely Asks Them What They Want
Young viewers are often not asked what they want to watch, even in films and shows about young people, according to a new study from UCLA. The findings, reported by Variety on 21 October 2026, come from the Teens and Screens Report, an annual survey run by UCLA's Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS).
The 2026 edition questioned more than 1,500 adolescents aged 10 to 24. It is the fifth year the report has run, and it tracks what young people want to see on screen, from genres to characters to the kinds of relationships they expect to watch.
Some of the answers point to where young audiences spend their time. YouTube ranked as the top medium for storytelling, cited by 72.9% of respondents. That is a bigger share than any other platform named in the survey, and it is a warning for studios that still treat long-form television and cinema as the main place stories live.
Casting drew a clear split. 16.8% of respondents said they would not cast an influencer in a project. Almost 40% said they would most prefer an unknown actor. Neither answer is a verdict on social media stars, but both suggest that a famous name does not automatically win over this audience.
Attitudes to artificial intelligence varied sharply by age. 44.2% of 10- to 13-year-olds described AI portrayals on screen as "fascinating." By contrast, 27.4% of 19-year-olds named "doom" as their dominant emotion when thinking about them. Gen Alpha and Gen Z, in other words, do not share one view of how machines should appear in the stories they watch.
On representation, 55% of respondents said they want to see more neurodivergent characters on screen. 57.3% want more platonic relationships, meaning close friendships rather than romance, to be shown. Those two numbers are among the most direct requests in the study, and they are simple to act on in a script.
The report's lead researcher is Yalda T. Uhls, founder and CEO of CSS and a professor of psychology at UCLA. Before moving into media psychology research, she spent nearly two decades as a senior studio executive at MGM and Sony. That background explains why the study is aimed at the people who make and buy content, not only at academics.
That aim is already taking shape. Individuals from CAA, Disney and UTA are scheduled to attend a CSS summit on 22 October to hear the Teens and Screens findings. The three agencies and studio are not commenting on what changes they might make.
What stands out is how often the answer to "what do young people want?" turns out to be "they were never asked." Studios spend heavily on research into audiences, but a survey of teenagers and young adults is a different exercise from focus groups held in a test-screening room. CSS is betting that the data will change how the questions get asked.
For parents, teachers and anyone who grew up with a single cinema down the road, the picture is one of a generation that is picky, practical and far from uniform. The next step is what the summit produces, and whether those requests reach a page of a development slate.
