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What are kids into these days?
carl_rogers
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
In my spare time I do a lot of writing and drawing. I come up with stories and characters and illustrate them in my sketchbook. A lot of my ideas are concepts that are interesting to me, but im not really producing anything that could potentially reach a wider audience (I hope to somehow make a career in writing). I'd like to write stories for television shows which kids would love to watch, but my problem is, I don’t know what kids these days are 'in to'. I remember when I was growing up, the craze was pokemon and digimon, all about fighting creatures, then all of a sudden, both those shows where forgotten and all the kids where into dragonball z and gundam.
i'm wanting to do research into this and was wondering if anyone could give me any advice or help point me in a starting direction? Do kids still watch t.v? Are there other forms of media they go nuts about? Or is it all MyFace and Spacebook these days? i've heard of shows like Ben 10, some new ninja turtles animated show and miley cyrus.
Perhaps some schools may allow me to drop off surveys.
i'm wanting to do research into this and was wondering if anyone could give me any advice or help point me in a starting direction? Do kids still watch t.v? Are there other forms of media they go nuts about? Or is it all MyFace and Spacebook these days? i've heard of shows like Ben 10, some new ninja turtles animated show and miley cyrus.
Perhaps some schools may allow me to drop off surveys.
carl_rogers on
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Well you've got your typical mostly boys watching the Superhero types. These are your Spider-mans, Batmans, X-Men. They tend to lean more to the "Give me muscley dudes, exlposions and a little bit of convincing story that lead up to it".
You've then got your mostly girl cartoons. These are the Kim Possible, Totally Spies!, 6Teen, and Atomic Betty. Girl orientated shows still have the action but they enjoy to see female leads and related themes to go with it.
You then have your neutral shows. George of the Jungle, Fairly Odd Parents, Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends, Dexters Lab. Those were shows that appealed to everyone right off the bat and offered compelling stories and characters.
These shows are clearly interchangable by gender but generally those are your trends. What's been interesting as of late is the way cartoons are being handled. In my day we didn't exactly have these days type of stories. We were given a villian, a hero and an episode that had to do with a simple thing (Venom robbed a bank, Spidey fought him, money was returned, the end). Now we have shows like My Gym Partner Is A Monkey where a boy is placed in a school for animals because his last name is Lion. We're seeing a lot more diversity in what they are showing to kids these days. This gives you, the writer a lot of creative room to play with.
So really with all the diversity we're seeing in childrens cartoons these days, you really can't figure out whats going to be a smash hit. When I was a kid I loved me some Superheroes, Rugrats, Doug, Johnny Bravo, those type of things. I think what kids are into at the very base is entertainment. You need to have interesting characters that don't have that familiar look to them. And stories we haven't heard before (because lord knows shows always have some type of "I sold my Baseball bat to get you this video game" "I sold my console to get you these baseballs!").
Just my 2 cents on the cartoons situation.
About dropping a survey to a school that seems like it could work. Also just park yourself down in front of the tv and watch the shows that come on after school hours. That should show you exactly whats doing the best because of the time slot. Kids DO watch tv, and a lot of it. Other popular kid media would be movies and video games. Comic book readers are a dying breed.
Steam | Live
Loves it, probably more than I do.
Part of her fascination with the series is that it is a long, epic story. So some kids aren't just into the typical, or at least enough to keep shows like that on the air.
My 7 year old thinks she is too old for learning programs like Reading Rainbow and that type of fare.
My 5 year old copies her older sister.
I want to burn the studio sets of all those shows (except the Backyardigans) with nuclear fire.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Kids are into the same universal story themes we all love. The lovable orphan vs. the merciless tyrant. The chambermaid with the heart of gold. The moisture farmer with the hidden destiny. Anything that has an ordinary young person who turns out to be extraordinary reasonates on a deep level with children. Cartoon Network has the demographic locked down right now.
Yes, kids still watch TV. They surf the internet, download movies, blog, and some of those little fuckers run straight to their parents even after they have agreed not to talk about Uncle StormCrow's Special Game.
Kids now also play more videogames and use the internet more. You will find a larger number of young girls playing games than you'd expect, and last-gen consoles are fairly popular among kids who don't play as frequently. Older kids with a deeper interest in gaming might own a 360 or PS3 (a 'gamer' child probably knows that the Wii isn't for them) and probably play the same games you do. Both consoles have vast libraries that are mainly dominated by M-rated games (particularly the most popular), so expect the young'uns to have played Call of Duty or Fable; I know my young cousins get finicky whenever they see a cartoon character using a joystick and progressing up levels, "Games aren't like that!". Girls dont play girl games. I am not sure if that really exists beyond the handheld market (Imagine: Petz, for example).
Hmm, kids don't really read comics. Comics are an expensive hobby to keep up with. At least with videogames, the parent buys the game with the expectation that it will last and that there is replay value.
Kids make full use of the internet. Unless your characters are poor or foreign in some way (alien, magical), they will probably know how to use a computer for basic things like web surfing. Online flash games (like PopCap) and communities like ClubPenguin are very popular.
Read Tvtropes.org. Be warned, it is addicting and will ruin your life.
Cartoons nowadays (as always really) feature characters doing fantastic, impossible things. Kids are very sheltered at this time and don't really get to go out much on their own or do things unsupervised anymore, so characters with autonomy doing all sorts of outlandish things are particularly appealing.
Kazu seems to do a lot of Kids type targeted stuff and recently released something called Amulet which is now being turned into a movie.
http://www.boltcity.com/