Most popular coming-of-age movies don't reflect the true challenges of adolescence, suggests new research.
An analysis led by Kate Stewart, a PhD student in communication at The Ohio State University, found that films that feature teen protagonists tend to depict experiences incongruent to those that real-life adolescents face. Unlike a typical high school student, protagonists in movies, for example, are rarely shown to struggle with the physical aspects of puberty, and typically excel at initiating romantic relationships.
These findings contribute to the idea that while on-screen representations of youth are vital touchstones, they emphasize largely unfamiliar and unattainable narratives, so that when young viewers compare their lives to what they see in media, they find they don't measure up.
Repeated exposure in the movies to idealized portrayals of romantic interaction and body image impacts how teens interact with the world around them, said Stewart.
"In a perfect world we would see comforting, reassuring, informative depictions of these types of things," she said. "But if you're seeing certain depictions over and over again, then it's going to start to affect how you view things and especially what you may come to expect."
The study was recently published in the Journal of Children and Media.
The researchers analyzed 53 popular films released between 2012 to 2021 such as Lady Bird, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters or The Fault in Our Stars, in which the main character was high school-aged. They coded key elements of puberty found in the movies.
The main result was that these coming-of-age movies didn't really include narratives about how real adolescents experience puberty. The large majority of movies exhibited a marked absence of physical puberty traits for both male and female characters, said Stewart.
Of the 53 main characters, both male and female, only two (3.8%) of them dealt with body hair. There were two characters (3.8%) dealing with acne. Among the 28 female leads, two characters dealt with breast development (7.1%) and four characters (14.3%) dealt with menstruation on screen. There were no characters who were depicted navigating growth spurts, changes in muscle development or voice changes.
The study found that the actors portraying the main characters were typically older than high school students. The ages of the actors playing the lead roles ranged from 16 to 28 years old. Only 10 lead actors were actually high school-aged (14 to 18 years old) at the time of filming.
And there is a lot of romance in these movies - much more than typically experienced by most adolescents, Stewart said. In most movies (88.7%), the main character had a clear love interest. Across all movies, there were 1,467 shared scenes between the main character and love interest. Of the 47 movies that had a love interest, 78.7% of them showed the main character having a successful romantic pursuit of their love interest.
Despite these choices, normalizing inauthentic experiences like easy romances and false body image expectations certainly isn't something the movie industry is doing maliciously, said Stewart.
"It's kind of a weird disconnect and misalignment between those two big features of adolescence," she said.
This study suggests that movies don't typically provide a realistic view of adolescence, instead offering an aspirational view. That's not what young viewers want, according to a 2024 report by the Center for Scholars and Storytellers.
It found that many teens are steering away from romance in the movies, as 63.5% of adolescents expressed a preference for stories focused on friendships and platonic relationships, rather than romance unnecessary to advancing the plot.
In other words, movies dealing with real-world issues with models whose lives are more relatable would be powerful tools for teens navigating extreme developmental changes.
Researchers add that the work serves as a stepping stone to understanding how other types of social norms impact young people's feelings toward relationships and body image.
"Our hope is that the industry will begin to weigh those pros and cons of allowing teen audiences to see puberty and more realistic changes," said Stewart. "By shining a spotlight on this, we're hoping to move forward and build on what we know about what teens learn from media."
Nicole Martins of Indiana University was a co-author.
