Reaching Out To Youth Audiences
I recently did a talk for the BBC Academy’s Production Unlocked series on this topic, and was asked by a number of people to share my notes afterwards, here’s a potted version in which I cover the themes which younger people feel are most relevant to them, including:
Social & Media Consumption by Under 35s
Representation and Identity
Changing Gender Roles
Authenticity
The Changing Face of Work
Social Video
Emotional Video
Creators and Creativity
Let’s start with the question “what makes someone part of Gen Z?” Here’s one answer.
And what makes a millennial? Here’s an answer to that.
But apart from hand gestures and stomach troubles, it’s of course when you were born and your attitude which defines which generation you’re in.
Millennials are now aged roughly 25 – 40 – becoming adults at the millennium. And Gen Z, they were born around the millennium, and are now aged about 10 – 25. Understanding what younger adults are interested in, and what they find relevant, will help you make content and reach out to them with content that they’ll find relevant in turn. Thinking about how these themes relate to what you do, and what you could do, is the key here.
Technology is one of the defining elements which shapes generational attitudes. Millennials grew up during the internet explosion and were the first generation to be digital natives. But Gen Z were born into today’s highly tech based, “always on” world where most of the adults around them have been using smart phones for much of their lives.
While older generations talk about the impending metaverse, many younger people are already living part of their lives in Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox, which arguably are highly developed metaverses.
These infographics from the World Economic Forum show the media types that different aged people sought out during the pandemic – and it gives a nice glimpse of what media types they tend to consume.
Millennials went for: online videos, online and broadcast TV, videos and live streams, online press, live streams and streamed music.
Whereas Gen Z went for far fewer types of content, dominated by: online videos, streamed TV and gaming.
We know that the youngest adults in the UK are concerned with different things to older generation, including: mental health, racial equality, gender equality and LGBTQI+ rights.
Economic inequality and climate change are also important to younger people, although data tells us that all generations are concerned with climate change.
Possibly a big surprise for many people is that LinkedIn actually has the 2nd highest percentage of users under 35 after Snapchat – at 79%, but it’s not terribly big so it’s unlikely to be the next big thing for Millenials and Gen Z, until they start pursing a career at least.
Then comes Twitch and Discord, both at 73% of users under 35. Discord is a platform for hosting real-time text, video, and voice chat intended to help people communicate while gaming. Twitch is also a live gaming platform.
Then comes Instagram at 70%.
And then comes TikTok at 69% – a bit of a surprise coming in 6th.
All the others pictured here are between 45-60%.
These super handy cards featuring headline stats about the most used social platforms collated by the brilliant Dan Taylor Watt (download them for yourself on Dan’s website), have some handy, and some surprising info for us around the platforms which have the most users under 35:
The platform with the highest percentage of younger users is Snapchat at 83%.
But looking specifically to the UK and to users who are under 24 (as seen in this graph from Statistica, “Share of Gen Z in the UK engaging with selected social media platforms daily in October 2022.”), we can see that in the UK Instagram then TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat are most used by younger adults in Gen Z.
These platforms feel like the most useful places to get inspiration when thinking about reaching out to under 35s, and so I’ve pulled out content trends reported by them (and others) below.
What follows are the key topics and themes which young adults feel are critically relevant to them. If you want to reach out to Gen Z and Millennials you certainly need to be aware of them if you’re not actively posting about them or including them in your content.
Representation & Identity
Meta’s latest Culture Rising report starts by focusing on identity. Based on their own (almost certainly, MASSIVE) data set looking at what people are talking about, below are the key topics which they have identified around “Diversifying Identities”.
Younger adults generally have a more fluid approach to gender than older generations, and as a result more gender-neutral representation is called for (more on that below).
Meta’s survey highlights that many people are seeking to have meaningful conversations about painful historical injustices, developing their racial literacy. Globally, 42% of respondents to Meta’s survey said their nationality, ethnicity, country of origin or race mattered more to their identity now than a year ago, and Gen Z and Millennials believe this most strongly. This is especially pronounced among younger generations in countries where colonialism marginalized other cultures, such as the UK. So, meaningful engagement with these issues where possible and appropriate will be welcomed.
More than ever, people are openly talking about LGBTQ+ pride, Asian pride, Black History Month and other inclusive, cultural celebrations. Technology and social media has of course been playing a key part in the rise of empowerment over recent years. Representing and working with relevant communities is key to being part of these discussions.
We know, for example, that when the Lionesses won the Euros in the summer of 2022, 88% of the conversation about it online came from Millennials and those in Gen Z who were both men and women. Young girls in particular were inspired because they felt represented.
According to Instagram’s 2023 Trend Report, disability advocacy is a leading issue for Gen Z and we can expect more members of the younger generations to engage with creators who advocate for those with intellectual or physical disabilities.
One of the trends identified in TikTok’s 2022 UK report was how people use it as a place for learning, citing this example from Claire Sisk who is blind and answers peoples’ questions about her experience on her account CanSeeCantSee.
Here she is answering the question that someone’s asked about whether her boyfriend cheekily takes advantage of her not being able to see…
Changing Gender Roles
You might think that we’re living the Covid era, or the era of endless uncertainty, but you’re wrong. We’re actually living in the Styles era. The Harry Styles era.
Lovely Harry is an icon to younger adults and in particular is huge with Gen Z. He was the first man ever to grace US Vogue’s cover, modelling womens’ clothing in the shoot and he’s definitely one step ahead when it comes to conversations about identity and inclusion. Young people speak positively about his refusal to engage in discussions about his sexuality, which he calls outdated, and there’s huge admiration for his bold and gender-fluid fashion choices.
Going back to that Meta report, nearly half of people who took part in their survey said that “traditional gender roles are increasingly less relevant—especially Gen Z and Millennials…” While we can see older generations taking part, this is very much a discussion “driven by the young”. And according to Meta, “A quarter of Gen Z respondents expect their gender identity to change at least once in their lifetime.”
YouGov tells us that Cara Delevingne, who is openly pan-sexual, is the most popular influencer with British Millennials. After Cara comes Eddie Hall – aka “The Beast” and former “world’s strongest man”.
While Eddie Hall posts mostly about body building, eating insane numbers of calories, motorbikes and tanks – traditionally pretty masculine topics… he’s also not afraid to speak about his own mental health and has just started a podcast all about mental health called Feast With The Beast – which is far from the traditional idea we might have of strong-man-type masculinity.
Authenticity
Picking up on open conversations from people like Eddie Hall, we know that younger people value others who they perceive to be open and honest. They want to see authenticity in:
Characters or people who aren’t perfect, and who help them think about their life and who they want to be
And people who are like them
On TikTok in particular, the list of celebs who are most followed by young British adults are all ones who are open, engaged and who publish quite raw content. Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi and Anne Marie are the most widely known people on the list - check out what they do and see how unmediated, raw and rough it often feels.
Besides celebrities that would be famous with or without social media, we can see authenticity everywhere.
For example, in the trend for behind the scenes content and street interviews – videos tagged #streetinterview and #streetinterviews have had 5 billion views on TikTok. Here’s a quite charming example of the sort of light hearted, unscripted content that often results.
The Changing Face Of Work
The world of work has undergone seismic shifts since the start of Covid, and attitudes amongst young people continue to shift, especially related to mental health and work, or work-life-balance.
The recent "Quiet Quitting" trend is an example of this, and highlights a cultural shift in the mindset of some younger audiences who aren’t subscribing to the idea that work is life.
LinkedIn, as a platform with a surprising percentage of under 35s, is a good place to look to find out more about trends in this area. In a list of 2022’s most shared posts by LinkedIn Business, there are some very clear trends in this area:
Looking out for yourself
Putting people first - building and supporting diversity, inclusion, and equity in the workplace
Immediate, unvarnished opinions from respected individuals
Talking about mental health
Posts expressing passionate and personal experiences
Empathy and kindness
Examples on that list also help to illustrate the importance of the basics of good social media practice too:
The power of strong visuals
Pulling out your most grabby information
Creating relatable and shareable content, which is immediately accessible
Social Video
To look into video, I’ve turned to YouTube’s Culture and Trends Report covering last year for their top trends.
YouTube tell us that we still have viral videos (like the Louis Theroux “Jingle Jangle” TikTok video before Christmas) but single videos are comparatively less likely to achieve broad cultural breakthrough today.
I think this is true and that as we live in an increasingly de-centralized cultural world now, we simply don’t see so many single pieces of content surfacing in that viral way.
YouTube’s trends report tells us that young people are less interested in what everyone else is watching, and they're used to a highly distributed landscape where they find what’s interesting to them most important.
Smaller communities are coming to the fore, and being a huge fan, or a member of a community is normal for Gen Z.
We’re definitely seeing culture through the lens of engaged and creative communities, which is entirely what drives so much activity on TikTok, where people are re-using audio from trending videos (be it dancing or lip syncing etc), making it their own and being part of a wider trend. Production and mixing of content, being part of meme culture, is a large part of social activity for many younger people now. The way I see it is that it’s not so much a “re-mix” culture, but a “re-make” culture.
People are moving between platforms too, lots of TikTok stars are also big on YouTube and vice versa, and lots of gaming stars are big on other platforms too.
Which is another trend that’s painfully clear to most people with older primary school children, that people are using the metaverse to create content shared on other platforms. In my house it’s all about Minecraft – watching people play Minecraft of course, but also stories acted out in Minecraft for example. It's not just my house of course, according to Ofcom, 54% of 16-24-year-olds in the UK watch gaming related videos.
Emotional Video
How video content makes you feel is another trend that YouTube identify.
Perhaps this more emotional understanding of our media diet comes from social media not just being a format or delivery mechanic, it’s an audience behaviour, increasingly like choosing the music we listen to – it’s part of our daily lives where we chose content based on the emotion or feeling we want to experience.
Soothing content and “comfort creators” (like Michelle Choi, cleaning her NY apartment in one of her “living alone diaries”), are really popular with younger adults. ASMR content has, of course, been popular for a while too.
Creators And Creativity
And my last topic, the people creating all this – perhaps this is you…
I love these 6 points from some academic research which I’ve read - they are the six primary factors that motivate young adults to follow their selected social influencers: relaxing entertainment, passing time, information sharing, information seeking, cool and new trends and companionship.
These categories can help us to understand whether people are likely to value the content that we’re creating.
Looking at the most popular TikTok stars we can see these themes come up in creators’ content again and again.
Khaby Lame is currently the world’s most followed TikTok creator, and he makes very silly, funny and upbeat videos, often re-using video he’s found elsewhere, as well as collaborating with brands and other stars. His videos are like individual scenes from a sitcom.
If we look at the TikTok stars most followed by young Brits, we can see these trends again – the list is quite different to the top people followed by young Brits on Instagram (which is mostly people well-known for lifestyle and fashion content).
Top on TikTok for young Brits is Jeremy Lynch, who posts really creative, entertaining videos.
Second on the list is The P00l Guy, who does something entirely different. He’s a swimming pool maintenance expert and shares videos explaining how he looks after swimming pools, honestly! It's the sort of content which reminds me of factual kids’ TV where you find out about how stuff works.
The trend for nostalgic content has been around for a while and continues to be popular with younger people, we can see it in the resurgence of Friends on Netflix and Stranger Things too. Often popular nostalgic content seems to be content with a strong moral compass, perhaps helping us to navigate a world that feels very complex.
But conversely, and this is a trend we’ve seen over a number of years now, horror or thriller content also continues to be popular with younger audiences too, in the form of horror and series like Stranger Things again. YouTube reports this trend as on the rise and there are some really fascinating examples of nostalgic “digital horror” stories which have been made within games and using tech which young creatives are already nostalgic about, Roblox from the 2010s for example!
So, young people have the need for calming content, but also visceral, shocking content too, which perhaps is good at shaking us out of our everyday lives.
Of course the more traditional areas haven't gone away - TV shows (Love Island!), reality tv stars (Love Island!), fashion (Love Island spin offs!), food (what they eat on Love Island) and factual (where Love Island is)... But generally Gen Z are a brilliantly creative bunch, reportedly 80% of them consider themselves to be creative. And some of the most interesting TikTok content comes from comedians and makeup artists like Holly Murray here, indulging in a little cultural nostalgia - enjoy!
Thanks for reading. If you’ve found this useful, do come and connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know your thoughts.