A new survey calls into question the widely-held perception that younger Gen Z consumers are abandoning longer-form TV content for short-form videos, social media, streaming music and video games.
Horowitz Research’s latest FOCUS Generation Next study, which tracks the media lifestyles of Gen Z consumers in the U.S., found that while Gen Zers (13-24 year-olds) report spending most of their time with social media, short videos, streaming music, and video games, a large majority are still heavily engaged with professional, full-length TV content.
In fact, the study finds that Gen Z audiences are almost as likely to be viewers of professionally produced TV content as they are non-TV content (e.g., short clips, user-generated content, video game live streams, videos on social media, etc.). Eight in ten Gen Zers report watching short-form videos weekly, while seven in 10 say that they watch TV content every week. The data are similar for both older (18-24 year-old) and younger (13-17 year-old) Gen Zers, the study found.
“Gen Z are most certainly engaged in long-form content almost as much as they are in short-form. What is interesting to us is thinking about how they might bring their short-form behaviors to the big screen and to their expectations when viewing long-form content and what that might mean from a content development, user experience, and revenue perspective,” noted Adriana Waterston, executive vice president and insights and strategy lead for Horowitz Research. “Moreover, now that the writers’ and actors’ strikes are over, we are excited to see how these younger audiences will take to some of the new content on the horizon, much of which is designed to appeal to them.”
As might be expected among Gen Z, this TV viewing is not just happening on TV screens and that mobile plays a very important role in their viewing habits, the researchers stressed.
More than half of Gen Zers say they typically watch professionally produced, long-form TV content on their TV sets, while over a third say they typically consume TV content on their smartphones.
While the smartphone is the device most typically used among 65% of Gen Zers to watch non-TV content, nearly two in 10 Gen Zers report that they typically watch non-TV/short-form content on their TVs, with older Gen Zers more likely to do so than younger Gen Zers, the Horowitz survey found.
This suggests that there are opportunities for media brands, digital publishers, and advertisers to engender small-screen behaviors on the big screen, such as sharing/socializing content and v-commerce, the researchers said.
To access TV content that appeals to them, Gen Z streamers use an average of 6.1 streaming services, up from 5.0 in 2020. Usage of FAST services among Gen Zers is on the rise, with the Roku Channel, Tubi, and Pluto TV being the most popular FAST services among this demographic.
The most popular TV content genres among Gen Z viewers include movies, animated series/cartoons (not anime), dramas, and music-related content, with older Gen Zers reporting higher viewership across most of these genres than younger Gen Zers.
To learn more about the findings from the new FOCUS Generation Next report, register for the webinar, The “Tea” on Gen Z, on Thursday, January 25, at 12 p.m. ET. Registration is available here.
