The global entertainment and media industry was valued at $2.8 trillion in 2023, reflecting decades of growth driven by a focus on what sells rather than why it matters (“Entertainment and Media”). Like any successful industry, media companies prioritize content that attracts audiences, even if it means producing work that is soulless and formulaic. The emphasis is on what’s popular, what’s funny, or what will get people talking, often at the expense of value and depth. Why does this story matter? What impact could it have? Too frequently, the industry overlooks the effect its creations have on viewers.
For teenagers worldwide, TV and movies are a universal interest. Screens offer a break from the pressures of everyday life and offer a chance to escape into other lives and stories. These experiences can be deeply comforting, bone-chilling, downright hilarious, or simply mind-numbing. Whether we’re celebrating, coping with loneliness, or just passing time, we turn to platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus for companionship. Intentionally or not, we are also learning from the movies and TV we consume, absorbing much more than entertainment. We are transported back and forth through time, across the world and beyond, and into the complicated lives of others. We absorb lingo and habits, humor and style inspiration, and may even equate hours of binge watching with life experience.
I watch more TV than most. I treat sitcoms like marathons and long movies as challenges. I’ve visited all three locations of the White Lotus Hotel, run wild in Manhattan with Serena and Blair, fought in underground rings with Tyler Durden, and saved Gotham City with Bruce Wayne. Inevitably, spending a notable amount of time with any one person or in any one place, it becomes a part of you, even if the people and place in question are entirely fictional.
TikTok user 8066780750586 writes, “It’s like aliens are trying to figure out what kids are like. Not one movie or show has ever nailed real reality, ever,” under a video criticizing the Netflix original show Ginny and Georgia. Shows like Never Have I Ever, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Riverdale, Outer Banks, All American, and Euphoria, allow the adultness of their creators to seep into the show. These shows take the limited knowledge they have about Gen Z and run with it, relying on stereotypes of screen addicted zombies and outdated TikTok humor in an attempt to connect with modern-day teens. These efforts, while potentially good-hearted, feel like a mockery to teenage viewers. The gap between actual teenagers now and the fictional teenagers played by 30-somethings might as well be a chasm, with how little we have in common. There is nowhere to look to see ourselves in mainstream media, only hyper exaggerations of teenagers to either feel made fun of or less than.
TV and movies are undeniably influential, and when the target audience for so many pieces of media also happens to be the most vulnerable and impressionable age group of the human race, there are responsibilities the entertainment industry owes to their teenage viewers. Education exists even outside of the classroom, in interactions with strangers and conversations with friends, at concerts, at meals, in mistakes and successes alike, and ultimately in the media we read, listen to, and watch. The entertainment industry, with their unlimited resources and undeniable power and influence, has a moral obligation to produce media that focuses on the “why” instead of the “what,” what teenagers need to see, hear, and learn about, instead of what they will be able to comfortably rot their brains too.
The industry tends to chase the most dramatic or comedic stories, ignoring realism and the consequences of exaggerating Gen Z stereotypes. Writers and producers rarely consider what teenagers are taking away from the media they create.
Storytellers of all kinds have a responsibility to produce media for more than commercial success, especially when it is targeted at individuals whose brains won’t even be fully developed for another 6 years. The entertainment industry owes everything to its main consumers, kids ages 13-19. They owe education, advice, wisdom, and empathy, on top of entertainment, to those who are the future of humanity. TV and movies have the potential to be more than cheap jokes about social media addicts and beautiful plastic surgery-ified actors. They can offer lessons that high school and parents can’t, and offer relatability and self-awareness by focusing on the “why” of creating media instead of the “what.”
Bibliography:
- “Entertainment And Media Global Market Report 2025.” The Business and Research
Company, www.thebusinessresearchcompany.com/report/
entertainment-and-media-global-market-report.