A University of California Los Angeles survey study shows that Generation Z is much more interested in seeing stories about platonic relationships than those featuring sex and romance.
More than half of the 1,500 young people aged 10 to 24 who participated in UCLA's Center for Storytellers and Scholars' "Teens and Screens" survey said they want to see more content focused on friendships.
fotostorm/Getty ImagesA new study about young Americans' entertainment consumption habits shows that Generation Z is far more interested in seeing stories of platonic relationships on screen than those featuring sex and romance.
More than half of the 1,500 young people who participated in the University of California Los Angeles's (UCLA) Center for Scholars and Storytellers "Teens and Screens" survey said they want to see more content focused on friendships. Nearly 40% said they particularly want to see more non-romantic relationships or asexual characters on screen. The majority of respondents said they felt that romance in media is overused. (The study in its entirety included youth aged 10-24, but questions relating specifically to sex and romance on screen were only asked of a subset aged 13-24.)
The research team is labeling this trend as "nomance."
"When there's media with too much sex, me and my friends often feel uncomfortable," said survey respondent Ana, age 16, in a video released by UCLA to accompany the study.
"My friends are I maybe awkwardly bear through it," said 20-year-old respondent Joseph.
The research team said Gen Z's chaste entertainment preferences stem from a craving for feel-good character relationships following the isolation of the pandemic years.
"Young people are feeling a lack of close friendships, a separation from their community, and a sense that their digital citizen identity has superseded their sense of belonging in the real world," wrote researchers Stephanie Rivas-Lara and Hiral Kotecha in an essay expanding on the survey results.
"The core essence of kids and teens will always be the same – from camaraderie to curiosity and a sense of adventure – and it appears that somewhere along the way, this may have been forgotten in storytelling."
The UCLA research team did not ask the surveyed youth if they sought out sexual or pornographic content outside the realm of TV, movies and social media.
"It's not that young people aren't interested in TV, movies and other media with sexual content, it's that they want to see more and different types of relationships," said UCLA Center for Scholars and Storytellers founder Yalda Uhls. "We did not specifically ask about porn so I couldn't say for sure. But one theory could be that the prevalence of porn could be a reason why they feel they want to see less sexual content in traditional media."
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By anonzzzies 2023-10-2615:349 reply Not only Gen Z, me too (I'm 50). I find it such a waste of time; it so rarely it adds anything outside cheap film minutes. When it does, you don't notice it (which is obviously how it should be; an integral part). Now I often just press forward to get through pointless scenes with wet dildo's etc that are not porn, but something i'm supposed to watch with the (albeit) adult family. If it would add something to the story then sure, but it's just filler.
I feel the same way, and I'm in my mid-40's. I always end up wondering why am I watching this stylized sexual encounter (which doesn't match almost anyone's experience almost any time) and often with people I don't really want to watch it with (teenage and adult children). If some light foreplay shows something about the characters, that's fine, or if something actually happened during the act that was important, that's also fine, but otherwise it's just gratuitous and annoying.
If I want to watch porn, I'll watch porn, I'm sure as hell not going to opt for some scene in a regular movie. Then again, maybe it's for people that refuse to watch porn for one reason or another and this is as close as they get?
> If I want to watch porn, I'll watch porn, I'm sure as hell not going to opt for some scene in a regular movie.
I think you’re on the right track here. In the 90s, teenagers would watch objectively terrible TV and movies for the handful of scenes where someone hot was as close to naked as allowed. Sports Illustrated sold a ton of swimsuit issues to guys who didn’t want to be seen buying Playboy, etc.
Now that anyone looking for that can get unlimited quantities of any type of erotic material they can imagine online, anyone looking for entertainment is going to skip anything which isn’t very good - no more trying to make up for bad writing and concepts by tossing in a gratuitous shower scene or having your heroine inexplicably choosing to fight in a bikini.
The other thing which has been developing for a while, and really ramped up with #MeToo was the realization that a lot of the guys making decisions about what goes into movies were pretty sleazy. It’s not a new observation that there were some pretty screwed up decisions about sexualizing things like rape or other violence, but I think a lot of people decided to stop watching it even if it was in a popular film or show, not to mention some very influential Hollywood types having their careers reconsidered in light of harassment claims, and I’d bet some of that factors into the results of this survey, too.
> Now that anyone looking for that can get unlimited quantities of any type of erotic material they can imagine online
Exactly. Like the OP said, if I want to watch porn, I'll watch porn. If it's important to the story to know that a couple slept together then you can show them going to bed, starting foreplay, and then fade out and cut back in to after the event. There's obvious ways to show the characters had sex together without actually showing the sex. We know they had sex - move the story along! You can still show a titillating butt shot or boob shot if you're trying to juice up your ratings and still not show the actual sex!
Or, maybe you do show it because there’s a scene where they’re also talking through something important and that’s a normal human interaction which is in character, but that’d be like 5% of what we see now. There is a certain percentage of people who don’t want to ever see sex in movies but I think that’s a lot smaller than the group of people who like it where it fits naturally into a well-written story but are turned off when it feels like a contractual obligation.
By taylodl 2023-10-2620:24 If it fits naturally into a well-written story, then sure. If it's just an obligatory sex scene then no. I know a good love scene when I see one! :)
It wasn't guys who made fifty shades of grey the only modern franchise to compete in sales numbers with Harry Potter, so I don't buy the idea that men were those who sexualized things like rape and violence.
By acdha 2023-10-2619:36 Slow down, I wasn’t saying all guys but referring specifically to a handful of people like Weinstein. There’s always been back and forth about sex in movies but a lot of people reconsidered how much certain things bothered them after learning that actresses were only doing them under duress or that the same guys making decisions about what was included and dismissing criticism as prudery were also harassers or rapists.
There’s another big misconception here: kink isn’t rape. 50 shades had some criticism but it was generally understood that boundaries were being pushed voluntarily. That’s not perfect - there are a million essays on that - but it’s very different from criminal violence.
What I was referring to was the way rape is portrayed as sexy in a way which doesn’t happen for other acts of violence in mainstream media. It’s become a lazy screenwriting trope complete with the soft lighting and prolonged focus on how attractive the victim’s body is in a way you’d never see for, say, a man getting stabbed even though both of them are having the worst days of their lives.
> and often with people I don't really want to watch it with (teenage and adult children)
This is the true reason why violence is allowed on TV, whereas sex is always problematic and often censored. You can watch violence with just about anybody (kids, parents, etc.) and it doesn't feel awkward.
You can watch it with anyone who has been desensitized. That’s a cultural choice: we train our kids to be weird about sex but okay with hardcore violence.
There's violence, and then there's violence.
Broadly speaking (many exceptions), Americans are fine with young teens watching a movie about a man using kung fu fantasy tactics to bloodlessly shoot his way through a building of bad guys, like John Wick, but don't necessarily feel the same way about something that depicts violence in a more brutal and arguably realistic way, like Saving Private Ryan. Is there a little puff of red CGI mist blood coming out of somebody's chest, or does the movie show one of the 'good guys' with half his skull blown away? These are both hardcore violence in a sense, but most people see a large qualitative difference between the two.
I think it basically comes down to how likely a movie is to give people nightmares, which of course is a function of desensitization. The American public is broadly desensitized to unrealistic violence, but most aren't desensitized to realistic violence.
Incidentally, Saving Private Ryan has a lopsided depiction of violence. The deaths of Americans are shown to be gruesome and agonizing, while the deaths of Germans are mostly shown to be relatively quick and clean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4FeyONCtfc I re-watched Saving Private Ryan after watching this video and found it to be very apparent, but it wasn't apparent to me the first time I watched it.
By acdha 2023-10-2619:48 > The American public is broadly desensitized to unrealistic violence, but most aren't desensitized to realistic violence.
I generally agree with your point but this has changed over time. For example, showing someone getting shot in combat was generally acceptable before torture or maiming since we’re more likely to say that those are never justified. Someone who grew up in a culture with public executions and punishments might have a more situational view based on whether it was “deserved”.
By Fire-Dragon-DoL 2023-10-2618:461 reply Define "desensitized". I watched plenty of movies that are violent, the only ones that get me are the ones about torture (makes me angry). However if I see some blood or my wife cuts with a knife, I have to lay down a few minutes to avoid fainting.
To me, clearly there is a huge difference between tv and in person. I've never even seen a dead person (except in movies).
That’s basically what I’m referring to. Take a small child and show them the same violent movie scene, and they’ll scream and perhaps have nightmares. Over time we learn that some things are not real and most of us get over that but my point was that this is learned, not innate.
By Fire-Dragon-DoL 2023-10-2619:051 reply So they are desensitized to the TV, I see what you mean now.
Usually this has a bad connotation, that's why I interpreted what you said the way I did.
By acdha 2023-10-2619:38 Yeah, I was just trying to be pretty literal: you no longer get a charged reaction from it.
By surgical_fire 2023-10-2617:561 reply Nothing to do with being disensitized. Most people can handle very violent movies while they would be extremely disturbed to see the same events in real life.
It's typically made very clear to everyone that violence is wrong, and what you are watching on a movie or series is fictional violence. In other words, you are watching something that no one would like to go through.
Sex is fundamentally different. As it is not only desirable in many senses, but it is also a basic human function, but at the same time it is something extremely intimate, not something you share with any random person.
By acdha 2023-10-2618:54 > Sex is fundamentally different. As it is not only desirable in many senses, but it is also a basic human function, but at the same time it is something extremely intimate, not something you share with any random person.
That’s cultural - our reactions to violence are pretty fundamental, too, with roots deep in our brains. It’s natural to feel empathy for someone being hurt, to appreciate the implications of them being hurt or killed, etc. The difference is that our culture says that’s okay to show children, so most of us are at least partially desensitized during childhood.
Are you sure it is a cultural choice? Do you know of any cultures where it is reversed?
By acdha 2023-10-2617:48 The religious community I grew up in treated them both the same, to the point that kids would be teased in school for reacting to movie violence because they were reacting appropriately to an image of someone being killed or mutilated.
By denton-scratch 2023-10-2616:371 reply I find it worse than a waste of time; I find it distracts from the plot.
I'm no prude, and I have no problem with porn. But for the most part, I find the mandatory sex scene is a huge distraction from the plot. Why not hint at it, like they used to?
I re-watched Don't Look Back the other night; the sex scene in that movie is fine, because it really is part of the plot. But chucking in a long, sweaty sex scene just because you've cast a pretty actress is stupid. I treat it like an ad-break - I either fast-forward, or I go to make a cup of tea.
By hulitu 2023-10-2621:01 > I find the mandatory sex scene is a huge distraction from the plot.
Then watch some european movies. Unlike Hollywood, the sex scenes have a meaning in the whole construct. ( Meaning of life by Monthy Python for example ;) )
By martopix 2023-10-2615:48 I remember reading an article on how movies and TV today are not quite able to make meaningful and interesting sex scenes that are actually well made and add to the story. I think this was specifically for western movies. But I can't find it now.
One thing my SO noticed first and I could only agree: every comedy MUST have a puke scene. I guess like the sex, some big data guy noticed a slight increase in audience at sex and puking scenes (not together, luckily) so the producers mandate them now everywhere. I also feel the average movie has gotten way bloodier over time but last time I mentioned this it didn't go down well with this crowd.
By karmakurtisaani 2023-10-2618:32 Also, the puking is always fake as hell. A mouthful of some watery liquid spat out with horrible overacting. Nothing like the real life horror that's a proper five-fold stream of that foul greenish brown mess filled with what was supposed to be your lunch.
Family guy did some hilarious puking scenes back in the day by showing it as horrible as it really is. The Hollywood vomit-lite is just embarrassing at this point.
By smcg 2023-10-2617:01 "average" is a very debatable metric. IMO, movies with practical effects are more shocking than the CGI that is common now.
By MrBuddyCasino 2023-10-2615:44 Same here (Millenial), the scenes are usually just dishonest and uncomfortable padding of runtime, adding nothing to the plot or the vibe. There must be some market research that prompts its inclusion, I can't understand why they do it.
By exsomet 2023-10-2621:23 This is how I feel, but I also find that it’s overused as a device to inject manufactured gravity.
Some stand up comics use something similar. It’s easier to make someone laugh because they’re uncomfortable than it is to make them laugh by being funny, so some comics will be obscene and get their laughs that way.
In the same vein, it’s easier to make a story feel serious by putting in a sex scene than it is to write an engaging plot.
By Gibbon1 2023-10-2620:16 My theory is the wide availability of porn makes cheesecake in mainstream movies much less interesting than it was back when porn was heavily suppressed.
An example of how suppressed it was a friend told me her first husband (1960's) was a sleazy truck driver that made extra cash on the side transporting 16mm porn movies. Same way other more sleazy truckers transported drugs.
By moribvndvs 2023-10-2713:23 Good, I’m not alone. Even in my youth sex scenes annoyed the hell out of me. It’s essentially dead air and bad clichés, bringing momentum of the movie to a screeching halt. Heavens help us if there are multiple sex scenes in one film.
By drcongo 2023-10-2616:56 Totally agree. I've been thinking about this a lot for several years, so I pay attention to how often it's actually at all useful to the plot - I'd guess one in a hundred.
By crazygringo 2023-10-2615:362 reply Just to be clear: this is not a comparison with previous generations.
The headline and intro led me to believe this is a dip -- e.g. that young people 5 or 10 or 20 years ago liked the amount of sex, but young people today don't.
But that's not what the survey shows. All it shows is that people aged 13-24 today want less of it.
It may very well be the case that this isn't anything specific to Gen Z at this age, and that this was equally the case of 13-24 year olds 20 and 30 years ago. TV and film has been pretty sexualized for a long time. There is zero evidence in this study to indicate anything new.
I would say though that us Millenials are complete hypocrites who binged on the absolute worst kinds of content (MTV reality/dating shows) in our teens and twenties and now want to police the hell out of everything.
By emptysongglass 2023-10-2615:471 reply Not sure that's the case. I think this is more a Gen Z thing. Most millennials I know think Gen Z is "not great" in their conservative outlook. (Don't even get me started on Gen Z fashion.)
Hipsters were despised back in my day, even by hipsters themselves, but in the end I think we all had a lot more fun than Gen Z today. I wouldn't change any of it.
By ghusto 2023-10-2616:22 > I think we all had a lot more fun than Gen Z today
That's an understatement. Any time I start to go down the hate-spiral on some stupid shit I see a gen-zedder doing, I remember how neurotic and miserable they are, and feel sorry for them again.
It also helps to remember this is exactly how adults felt about the things we did in the 80s and 90s :P
Like Gen Z doesn't want to police the hell out of everything too. I think culture has just shifted.
By busterarm 2023-10-2617:00 I dont know about you but none of the zoomers that I've ever worked with had any organizational power (they're all still too young) and all of the oppressive horseshit that I've ever had to deal with in my career has come from my peers.
By ToucanLoucan 2023-10-2615:461 reply As with the comment above yours, it just rarely adds anything. And by erotic standards most of it is shit in that department. I love and enjoy adult entertainment and if I want to be titillated, I'll go watch some of that. A few minutes of the softest softcore imaginable is basically just filler.
I don't hate it, and when it's part of a plot of course it makes sense, but a number of the ones in Game of Thrones I recall were just pointlessly long, sometimes disturbing excuses to get the pearl clutchers riled up and get hate shares on social media. It's tiresome. If your art can't stand on it's own don't make it.
By denton-scratch 2023-10-2616:451 reply Oh, I've complained upthread about sex scenes that don't contribute to the plot; but I liked GoT, sex scenes and all. GoT is like Marmite, though.
By ToucanLoucan 2023-10-2617:52 I mean, I did like it but I'll be the first to admit I cannot judge anything related to that series anymore after the absolute trash fire that the last season was. Don't think I'm alone there either, I have never seen something so rapidly and thoroughly remove itself from pop culture the way Game of Thrones did.
By throw4847285 2023-10-2615:462 reply This seems like a manufactured moral panic. I don't think we're entering a new age of prudery. Even if the survey is reflective of a broader change, taste in media ebbs and flows.
I highly recommend listening to You Must Remember This, Karina Longworth's movie history podcast. Specifically, the most recent two seasons have been about sex in movies in the 80s and 90s. She does a lot to ground changes in depictions of sex in movies in their political and cultural moment. The episodes vary in quality, but the best have been enlightening. I think she's sympathetic to the narrative that "Gen Z is prude" because she's a big fan of nuanced depictions of sex in movies, and sees a decline. And yet, listening to the podcast you can't help but see these trends as somewhat cyclical, which is why I'm not worried.
> I don't think we're entering a new age of prudery.
It's possible it's actually the opposite. They don't note the people surveyed as feeling morally repulsed, just that's it's somewhat awkward. It's possible that a wider acceptance and availability of porn means that less people feel the need for pseudo-porn in their mainstream movies. I'm not Gen-Z (far from it) but I also find these scenes feel out of place and gratuitous in movies unless they add to the story in some way. I can easily find something far more arousing if I want, so why am I forced to deal with some scene that doesn't really add much to the story most times?
By StevenWaterman 2023-10-2616:053 reply Exactly. Sex on TV used to be edgy and scandalous, but now it's just banal.
If it's not scandalous, not edgy, not meaningful to the story, and not even erotic, why would I want to watch it?
This is like being shocked that people report wanting less shoehorned-in product placement on TV
By johntdaly 2023-10-2616:11 I would pretty much remove any sex that doesn’t drive the story in some way and keep it short. You are correct that sex doesn’t hit like it used to hit. I would argue the same for violence and special effects. We’ve seen it all and we’ve seen a lot of it. What we haven’t seen a lot of in some time is good story telling that doesn’t rely on gimmicks.
> "This is like being shocked that people report wanting less shoehorned-in product placement on TV"
Or less "shoehorned-in" political propaganda B.S. for that matter. There's entirely too much crap in TV and movies these days that has less than nothing to do with the story that's being told, and is only there to appease one or another political-minded group.
By soco 2023-10-2616:23 The good side of this is that I can go fetch another drink while they get busy.
It's not necessarily easy to draw an objective line between gratuitous and not. Particularly in the case of slasher horror movies; the nudity felt gratuitous, a cheap way to sell tickets that would make up for other production flaws. But such gratuitous nudity became a defining characteristic of that genre, and so in that sense it wasn't actually gratuitous. Modern horror movies seem to be more sexless now, and IMHO feel incomplete because of it. When it becomes apparent that a movie thinks no amount of explicit gore is too much but a nipple would go too far, it breaks my immersion by making me aware that the film was, in some sense, calculated to be inoffensive.
By autoexec 2023-10-2616:50 Horror at least had an excuse. Sex was basically used to prime people for excitement. It's a cheap trick to hijack our physiology and increase tension so movies didn't have to work as hard to be actually frightening.
Old slasher movies were calculated to include nipples (usually shortly before something scary happens) and new horror movies are calculated to be inoffensive.
I still prefer horror to be a bit gratuitous though. Psychological horror doesn't really need it, but if there's gore it does seem somewhat incomplete without a little sex thrown in.
By johntdaly 2023-10-2616:06 I don’t think people mind the sex because of moral. What is bothering me is that I feel they use sex as a filler. To me it is one of the indicators that the story is probably lacking. Sort of like with the old Deathstalker movies where sex was used to try to distract you from how bad the movie was. People get that they are being distracted and react against it.
