YT Gore & Recession Core
Playable brands, recession core, GenZ’s preference for UGC, concerns about YT safety amidst AI generated videos, and AI therapists… only a few of the things we’ve read this week. Here we go.
Welcome back to Fellow Kids, your go-to-guide on the elusive and fragmented attention of GenZ and GenAlpha. *sorry this is a longer edition everyone, too much news!
📊 Deloitte Digital 2025: GenZ trends
GenZ audiences (ages 13-28) are leading the move toward creator-led or user-generated content (UGC). Hollywood’s biggest competitor is .. literally anyone with a phone. Some highlights from Deloitte’s digital trends report:
All content producers, platforms and advertisers are competing for an average of 6 hours of daily media and entertainment time per person
Of those 6 hours, Gen Z spends upwards of 1.4H a day on social media and an additional 1H a day watching ‘ugc’ content, compared to less than 1 hour a day with ‘live tv/cable’.
Social platforms are the nexus of discovery, awareness, and hype for film and TV: 56% percent of younger generations surveyed watch TV shows or movies on SVOD after hearing about them from creators online, and 53% say they get better recommendations on what to watch from social media.
Roughly 50% of Gen Zs and millennials surveyed say they feel a stronger personal connection to social media creators than they do with TV personalities or actors.
Younger generations are more price sensitive and churn more frequently on SVOD/ streaming than older generations.
Studios have been focused on content output, whereas platforms have focused on gathering and targeting audiences. Studios need to adopt technology quickly in production, distribution, ad targeting, and to compete in the new landscape.
📣Marketing efforts need to start and end on social platforms. PERIODT.
📺 Netflix & Kids: Global Wins + Fading Crowns
Emily Hogan (ex-Disney, kids audience expert) dropped insights on what’s working for Netflix’s younger audience (interview here too). Here’s a recap:
No-dialogue comedies = global gold (easy for cross-market / global appeal)
Cocomelon’s in decline (slipping by 60% YoY) *I attribute this to the lack of parent trust and recent controversies that the ‘fast pace’ of the shows impact child brain development
Unicorn Academy from Spinmaster (the creators of Paw Patrol) have another hit on their hands!
Gabby’s Dollhouse continues to be a successful franchise for Netflix and is launching a feature film.
Full length features for kids continue to be strong performers for kids (titles from Sony and Universal seem to be moving the needle the most for Netflix – even more than their first window deal with Skydance
💡 Parents want safe, curated content. Curation (and agency) is a topic I’ll dive more into in the coming weeks - as it is a continued trend for parents as well as an algorithm fatigued younger generation.
😱 YouTube + Kids + AI = A Nightmare
A recent wired investigation uncovered deeply troubling AI content that has been targeted toward kids (recap here too). Scary! Of course, YouTube outlines content policies for Kid targeted content but when 500 mins of content are posted on YT every minute, things are slipping through the cracks. This is not the first time YT has been in hot water with parents and kid audiences, some might remember the 2017 kid safety scandal around the same time as YouTube was forced to settle $170M COPPA violations. There were safety concerns even BEFORE the rise of genAi.
📉 What happens now? Parents turning to curation like Netflix or other streamers to distribute ‘brand’ and audience safe YT creators into their platforms - such as Blippi, Ms.Rachel (Sean Atkins as a good reason why) and we’re seeing this globally too with PinkFong + JapanTBS.
🎮 Design for Play: From Ads to Immersive Worlds
Don’t create disruptive ads, but create a world, characters … something to play with. If you’re not building for play, you’ve been forgotten. Brands like Netflix have dove in head first with immersive worlds that bring together characters, games, locations from shows like Stranger Things, One Piece etc with “Nextworld” on Roblox and of course Disney’s $1.5B investment in Epic Games in 2024. Immersive gaming is the new kids’ playground.
💸 Recession Core - “Little Treats”, Handmaids Hats & Hemlines
Economic stress is bubbling into social trends - the latest being recession core. This shows up in many different ways:
Little Treat culture - Pop Mart & Labubu obsession are the newest dopamine hit.
Longer hemlines - Style Analytics did a great deep dive on the hemlight theory and data but make it fashion also supported this with a men’s shorts analysis. To add fuel to this theory, WWD has called Bermuda shorts the “GenZ look of the summer” its safe to say, we’re headed into financial instability.
Bucket hats - Fashion is is inherently a reflection of the times. I’d argue the milkmaid dresses signaled the tradwife era we live in now, so it is no surprise that summer’s hottest accessory are these (sorta cute) handmaid coded Loran Murray ‘bonnets’.
Recession Indicators trends packaged as video formats - such as meal prepping tips for ‘new poors’, DIY tips as well as ‘prepping’ videos are filling FYPs.
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📽️ YouTube Goes Studio Mode
YouTube just launched its own film & TV production division called 100 Zeros. Here’s the kicker - they’re not distributing on Youtube or spinning of “YT Originals” (the OGs remember YT Red)...instead, they’re backing scripted and unscripted projects for third-party platforms - Netflix, studios, and streamers. They are jumping on the fact that Hollywood and ‘traditional studios’ are incredibly out of touch with younger audiences, have a crumbling production model, and of course, also an effort for Google to continue to grab larger shares of culture and as a result… a bigger slice of the ad pie.
My two cents? YT can really win here. Young audiences are begging to be reflected in media - this article really sums up the Hollywood struggle and lack of growth.
🤖Rise in AI companionship
Harvard Business Review announced the 2025 most common uses of GenAI and despite early hype around ‘productivity’ and “Ai as a tool” - it appears that GenAI is actually being used for “life companionship” - therapy, advice, emotional support. What does this say about our society and how will this impact younger generations and how they choose to socialize? Some might say this has been a trend for awhile - character.ai etc.
📈 ChatGPT Shop integration
Oh and incase you missed it - OpenAI is teaming up with Shopify to pilot an integrated shopping future within ChatGPT. This is definitely a space to watch, especially for our younger shoppers. A seamless recommendation chat engine to checkout will be quite disruptive to ecommerce (just like TikTok shop was an emergent platform in the last few years).
Last but not least, don’t forget - everything is a content format.
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Thanks for reading! If you have any specific topics, questions or ideas on how to make this newsletter more fun (and informative), don’t hesitate to connect @abbyho.