Not too long ago, networks like Disney Channel and Nickelodeon ruled the airwaves—and the hearts of preteens.
Tween-targeted U.S. franchises such as Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, iCarly, and High School Musical captivated audiences between 8 and 13. These shows launched music careers, product lines, and global fan bases, becoming cultural touchstones for a generation.
Those kids are now adults, and today’s tweens—members of Gen Alpha—are not watching reruns of late 2000s pre-teen sitcoms. Nor are they tuning into a new wave of similar programming. Instead, many are watching Netflix series like Stranger Things and Wednesday, which although feature characters under 18, deal with darker themes. Many also follow reality dating shows like Love Island, Love is Blind, and unfiltered streams on YouTube and Twitch.
This shift has implications beyond entertainment. According to experts, the disappearance of tailored “tween” content and the growing appeal of media for older teenagers and adults reflect broader changes in technology and marketing. And for Gen Alpha, growing up in this landscape may carry long-term consequences.
“Tweens have always aspired to watch content geared toward older teens—the difference now is they have far more access,” Debra Kissen, founder and CEO of Light On Anxiety Treatment Centers, told Newsweek. “In the past, they’d have to sneak into a rated R movie; today, it’s just a click away.
“What matters most is helping kids navigate this with critical thinking and steady support from the adults in their lives.”
The Rise and Fall of the Tween Genre
In the 2000s and early 2010s, shows centered on middle school and high school life—albeit with escapist storylines—exploded in popularity.
Stars like Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, The Jonas Brothers, and Victoria Justice all became household names. Tween media had its own economic ecosystem, spawning magazines, soundtracks, tours, and tie-in merchandise.
Millennials and Gen Xers also had formative tween content, namely ’90s boybands, Britney Spears’ teen idol era, movies like Matilda, My Girl and Bridge to Terabithia that taught lessons about identity and loss—and earlier films such as The Karate Kid and John Hughes’s high school hits.
But the genre’s dominance has waned. Today, tween-focused content is harder to spot, and culturally relevant tween stars are even rarer. Unlike the High School Musical franchise—whose third film received a theatrical release—few modern preteen narratives reach that level of success.
One TikTok creator, who goes by @asantemadrigal, shared in a September 6 clip about the death of tween media that “all the stars that would be on Disney Channel today, are now trying to be content creators.
“Tweens deserve their cringe but safe content and their own world,” he said.
While networks like Nickelodeon and Disney Channel still operate, they now compete with social media platforms where influencers create fast-paced, attention-grabbing content at a fraction of the cost—and with none of the regulatory oversight.
Even Disney+, once expected to expand tween-focused offerings, has produced several high-budget dramas, adult-oriented documentaries, glossy remakes of childhood classics, and recently announced a merger with Hulu.
Tweens Watching Grown-Up TV
The appeal of older content is not new. But the level of exposure and autonomy Gen Alpha has is unprecedented.
“We have several overlapping trends collapsing at once,” Maria Dykstra, a digital marketing strategist and founder of a content agency, told Newsweek. “The audience of traditionally tween-focused shows is getting older…The shows were faced with the dilemma: Try to go after new generations? Or up-level the current content to keep the audience they already had?”
Dykstra, who worked on Cartoon Network campaigns and has a Gen Alpha daughter, pointed to shows like Adventure Time evolving to retain aging fanbases.
Meanwhile, the explosion of “real-life” short-form content on platforms like TikTok and YouTube means tweens can watch and even participate in content that is unscripted, often adult-themed, and unfiltered.
“These raw, non-rated clips tap into the tweens’ ultimate desire to appear older than they are,” Dykstra said. “That’s peer-pressure on steroids.”
That sentiment is supported by data. A 2025 study by Precise TV found that 78 percent of U.K. children aged 10 to 12 prefer YouTube to traditional television.
California-based Common Sense Media found that in 2025, 51 percent of children aged 0 to 8 have their own mobile device, either a smartphone or a tablet. The survey discovered that tablets have the highest proportion of ownership among children compared to any other device, with 47 percent of children aged 0 to 8 owning their own.
Unfiltered streams tailored to older audiences can include sudden shifts in tone, profane language, or emotionally volatile behavior, and live chat features may expose children to unsafe interactions.
“The long-term risk is sustained exposure to themes and imagery that aren’t developmentally suited for our children, delivered by feeds that are trained by their users’ behavior to serve ever edgier material over time,” Yaron Litwin, a digital parenting and screen time expert, told Newsweek.
What Happens When Kids Skip Childhood?
Several creators on TikTok and other platforms have tapped into the disappearance of the “tween” space.
One creator, @amaris_simone, shared in a clip from September 15 that we need to “talk about the fact there’s no tween media.” She added that the children’s movies she once watched on VHS tapes taught her important lessons, and that the dwindling state of children’s media today could be to blame for growing numbers of children struggling with literacy or “iPad kids.”
Others pointed out that tween entertainment may have always been a short-lived phase in media history, squeezed out by fast-evolving beauty standards and social media trends.
One creator, who goes by @littlemisstippytoes on TikTok, said in a post that before tween media rose to prominence, preteens were either seen as early bloomers for looking more mature, or childish for looking their age. They were not defined as a specific cohort. She pointed to Gen Alpha beginning to circle back to this, due to their comparatively early interest in beauty and skincare.
In a separate post, another creator (@thedigifairy) said that Gen Alpha and Gen Z lack the “third spaces” that their parents grew up with—like malls, school clubs, or youth centers. Instead, their social environments are often built online, making it harder for parents to oversee what they watch, and what the algorithm subsequently feeds them.
A New Type of Childhood
The shift away from tailored content is not just about media preferences—it is a reflection of broader economic and social changes.
“Commercially, advertising dollars are shifting from traditional media to social media,” psychiatrist and author Grant Brenner told Newsweek. “There is less financial incentive to create content for specific demographic groups on traditional media.”
Brenner warned that Gen Alpha is part of a “vast, uncontrolled social experiment.”
Raised around devices from birth, many children are learning to regulate emotions through screens rather than human connection. He added that their busy parents are often too distracted by their own screens to model healthier behavior.
“The damage from this is profound,” Brenner, a parent to teenagers, said. “The intrusion of technology into formative social relationships [is contributing to] rising rates of social anxiety, difficulty with relatedness, and likely mood and cognitive problems.”
He said the COVID-19 pandemic compounded the issue by accelerating digital dependence and reducing in-person socialization. While online platforms can foster connection, they can also enable harmful interactions and skew perceptions of reality through parasocial relationships and AI-generated content.
“There is little impetus for traditional media outlets to invest in targeted, expensive content development as the customer base has moved elsewhere,” Brenner said.
What’s Next for Gen Alpha?
Experts believe there could be a return to youth-focused content in some form—but what it looks like remains uncertain.
“Content must be cheap and easy to make, shorter form, and more variable to capture increasingly limited attention and a higher demand for stimulation and reward,” Brenner said.
Dykstra said: “My generation grew up on Saturday morning cartoons and my Gen Alpha kids are growing up on an eclectic collection of user-generated YouTube videos. And when they cannot find what they like, they create their own content on the spot. I can see in 10 to 15 years, many of the traditional content formats seizing to exist completely and being replaced by personalized, interactive, real-time content.”
But as the days of TV catalogues detailing what Disney Channel will air have faded away, experts agree that the digital lives of tweens will remain largely in the hands of algorithms and influencers unless caregivers intervene.
As Litwin put it: “Parents need practical guardrails to address this phenomenon.”
