Why is Gen-Z Not Watching TV Anymore?
From the highlight of our days to not even crossing our minds…where did it all go wrong?
Let’s be honest, you don’t watch television (TV).
And if you do, it’s not often. You might be in the small minority who still actively watch a lot of it, but this is becoming increasingly unlikely.
With every year that passes, we seem to get further and further away from watching TV. Sitting down to the Saturday night gameshows with your family is a dying tradition.
But why do we not watch TV anymore?
Streaming Services
Choice is everything. When one platform offers you select programmes you can watch, while another offers you endless different options, you’re likely to pick the latter. This is exactly why Gen Z chooses streaming platforms. TV forces you to watch something you might not want to, but a platform like Netflix gives you practically unlimited choice.
TV can make for some amazing entertainment, spanning from the drama of Love Island to the mystery of Sherlock, but it can’t adapt to your mood quite like streaming services can. If you fancy a laugh, you can easily go and find the comedy section and browse hundreds if not thousands of different movies to fit your taste. Whereas with TV, you could be forced to watch Marley and Me instead…(not the cheeriest I must say).
While there is an abundance of different channels offering various programmes to watch on TV, how often have you scrolled and scrolled through the options before you even reach the radio section, because there’s nothing you want to watch?
Quite often I imagine.
Streaming services also mostly avoid adverts, which is yet another thing that puts Gen Z off from watching TV, as nobody wants to have their favourite show interrupted.
Ultimately, TV just can’t offer the same amount of choice and viewing pleasure as streaming platforms.
How Money Impacts TV
It costs a whopping £169.50 a year for a TV license. Amazon Prime costs £8.99 a month or £95 a year, Netflix £10.99 a month, which is £131.88 per year and Disney + costs £7.99 per month or £109.90 a year. The three biggest streaming platforms are all cheaper than a TV license.
Why would you choose to pay more for a TV license when you can get much more variety for a lot cheaper elsewhere…
Such extortionate pricing is yet another reason that stops Gen Z from watching TV. For students, or people who’ve newly moved out of their parent’s home, they just don’t have £169.50 spare. Whereas, paying £7.99 a month for a streaming service is a lot more viable.
Student Discount
While many services like Netflix and Disney don’t offer a student discount, Amazon Prime do. This makes a platform like this much more appealing than the traditional TV license, which has no discount for students, despite how little money Gen Z has to pay such a big fee. It’s almost as if they’re trying to push them away from watching TV.
As a result of all this, more and more people are no longer paying for a TV license. That in itself has its own domino effect, as this means the BBC don’t have as much money to make original shows, which leads to lower budget options and inevitably worse shows being created. This then puts people off watching TV even more.
The Decline of TV
While streaming services and money have undoubtedly impacted why Gen Z no longer watches TV, the very decline of television itself is just as important.
Growing up we had the magic of Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, CBBC, all sorts. We were spoilt for choice. Then as we grew older, our taste broadened.
We could watch anything from Top Gear to Big Brother. You’d genuinely be excited to get home from school because that meant you could watch TV.
But now it’s just not the same, and Saturday night TV’s decline is a big part of that.
Saturday Night Entertainment
This is where our fondest memories of television come from.
‘Total Wipeout’, ‘You’ve Been Framed’, ‘Merlin’, ‘Hole in the Wall’, ‘X Factor’, ‘Britain’s Got Talent (BGT)’, ‘Doctor Who’, you name it. Saturday night had everything.
Saturday nights were truly special. You’d be looking forward to the weekend just to watch these. While some of these shows like ‘BGT’ and ‘Doctor Who’ are still running, there isn’t the same spark about them that there once was. You could say it’s nostalgia, but most people would agree that ‘Doctor Who’ was better in the early 2010s, and ‘BGT’ the same.
Whereas Saturday night TV now, you might still have a few of the old classics but the rest is just simply boring. The gameshows are repetitive, the dramas are weak, it’s just not the same. There is never any part of me that wonders what’s on TV at the weekend.
Shows come and go but the lack of quality replacements is cementing the decline of TV.
Busy Schedules
If the quality of shows dropping wasn’t enough to stop us from watching, our busy lives certainly will be. We’ve all grown up now, so on a Saturday night we could be out with friends or even working. We just can’t schedule our day around the time of a programme anymore. If we were to watch TV, it’d be when it’s convenient. This is often late at night when there is less choice or the best shows have already aired.
As a result, Gen Z then opt to watch something on Netflix or Prime because of its consistent availability. BBC has promoted ‘iPlayer’ a lot recently, but this falls short because of the lack of quality on TV now.
It’s all connected.
Doom Scrolling And Attention Span
We’re all addicted to dopamine. We’ve become so used to the instant gratification of apps like TikTok, that we struggle to sit and watch anything longer than a 30-second video. So watching an hour of a TV show is increasingly unappealing. We might turn it on in the background, but we’re more likely to be looking at our phones doomscrolling on social media.
This is the case with streaming services as well.
When getting back from a long day at school, university or work, it’s a lot easier to just scroll on TikTok than sit and concentrate on a show for an hour. You can easily spend hours doom-scrolling without even knowing.
The more we do this, the more it makes watching a long TV show unappealing and stops us from watching it altogether.
Ultimately, we’ll always cherish the good times we had watching TV, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever watch as much as we once did.
