Gen Z wants less explicit content on screen, study finds

Less skin, not more on screen, says Gen Z.

Nearly half of 10 to 24 year olds (48.4%) think movies and TV present “too much sex,” according to a study at UCLA.

UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS) released its annual “Teens and Screens” report on Oct. 22, finding Gen Z prefers more “relatable” screen-content, including relationships that depend on friendship, not romance and sex. 

“They want to see people who look like them and face challenges like theirs,” the study concludes. “And perhaps most tellingly, they want to see the relationships that are often central to them: authentic friendships, and especially bonds between people of different genders that don’t necessarily turn romantic.” 

The survey of 1,500 adolescents in the U.S. was taken Aug. 13-25, with 100 respondents for each age and a representative sample from around the country. 

A majority of those aged 14 to 24 (59.7%) said they “want to see more content where the central relationships are friendships.” Furthermore, 60.9% said romantic relationships on screen should be “more about the friendship between the couple than sex.”  

Some adolescents don’t want to see romantic relationships at all, with 54.9% of respondents saying they want opposite-sex characters to “prioritize their friendship” instead of becoming romantic, according to the study’s press release. Additionally, 49% of adolescents said they want to see more friendships between same-sex individuals. 

“Teens are telling us loud and clear – they’re ‘over’ forced and unrealistic romantic storylines,” Alisha Hines, CSS vice president of research and programs, said in the press release. “Our findings show that what they really want is content, characters and friendships that feel real and reflect everyday experiences they can authentically relate to.” 

Of the most “disliked tropes,” 52% of respondents said TV and movies involve “too many love triangles.” “Toxic relationships” represents the second most disliked trope, according to the study.  

David Mouriquand, writing for Euronews, correlated these screen-content preferences to the recent decline of sexual activity reported among high school students. In just two years, the percentage of teenagers who reported being “sexually active” decreased from 38% to 30%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2021 study.  

Additionally, Hollywood films contain 40% less sexual content, compared with the films of 2000, according to film-data analyst Stephen Follows. Nearly half of all movies displayed no sexual content, he found in his 2024 study. But according to the Economist, the scenes that do appear are more graphic and explicit, suggesting filmmakers have yet to adjust to the growing desire to see friendship sans sex on screen.