The Dearth of the Teen Show

Where did all of the age appropriate, insanely dramatic teen television go?

Over the weekend I was watching Make It Or Break It, a show about teenage elite gymnasts who must juggle friendship, family, and boys as they train for the Olympics, in search of a very specific scene. The scene I was searching for takes place in S2E10, “At The Edge Of The Worlds,” and shows (iykyk) Austin Tucker, a former Olympian who trains with the main girls, warning Kaylie’s parents that she is showing signs of an eating disorder. He also takes the time to confess his feelings toward her, of course. As I made a mental note to start my annual rewatch soon, I was reminded of a question I’d seen online a few times: what happened to all the teen shows?

Make It Or Break It aired on ABC Family (now Freeform) from 2009 to 2012.

Back in the 2000s and 2010s, ABC Family was where I went for a good, dramatic teen television show. We had it so good with shows like Make It Or Break It, The Fosters, Switched at Birth, Pretty Little Liars and so much more airing during our middle and high school years. The shows were decently-acted and written, compelling, dramatic, romantic, included some good lessons, and most importantly, were made with us in mind.

Make It Or Break It, during its three season run, tackled questions like how to have healthy competition with your friends, unhealthy ways of coping with stress and loss of control, how to handle losing, inappropriate relationships with mentors/adults, among so many other things. Switched at Birth discussed issues of class, racism, ableism, found family, and sexual assault. You get the point. These shows were not only wildly entertaining, but they taught its young-ish viewers about how to carry themselves in the world, and how not to.

Switched at Birth aired on ABC Family (now Freeform) from 2011 to 2017.

Nowadays it can be a bit harder to find where all the teen shows are hiding out. ABC Family has become Freeform and their most popular shows have slightly aged up their characters, and with it, their audiences. No knock on shows like Baby Daddy, Young & Hungry, and The Bold Type (I love all of them, truly) but they verge on the adult side of the teenage/adult demographic, which makes sense, because the majority of the channel’s key demographic is over 20 years old.

So the question remains: what happened? My guess is that with the rise of streaming in the late 2010s, networks like Freeform needed to adjust their programming in order to stay afloat among the onslaught of new material ready at its viewers fingertips. Additionally, as kids started to be born with phones and social media in their hands rather than acquiring them later on, strictly young adults’ programming started to fade out as kids just had greater access to and more interest in more adult material. If the trending show of the moment is HBO’s Euphoria, kids will want to watch it. With phones, tablets, and laptops readily available, not to mention a basic level of internet savvy, not much can stop them from watching a show that’s obviously too mature for them.

This is coming from someone who found Fifty Shades of Grey (the movie) online as a tween because I just couldn’t stand everyone else talking about it without at least seeing what the hype was about.

This trend in television is similar to the phenomenon of tween girls “taking over” Sephoras. Kids want what they are exposed to, and nowadays, their exposure is dictated almost entirely by what is trending on social media, age appropriate or not. Whether it’s Drunk Elephant skincare products or Euphoria, they want to be in the loop! It’s only human.

Even further, streaming platforms don’t have to deal with the demands of advertisers in the way that networks do, so their content can be a lot more adult. The type of content that Freeform was known for is just more conducive for network television than streaming. It’s adult enough that kids think it’s cool and exciting, but it’s a little too tame to really excel on streaming.

Now, there isn’t a complete loss of the teen show of course, there are plenty of tame shows available on streaming platforms (all of the above Freeform classics are available online too, mostly on Hulu, if you’re wondering) that are acceptable for teens and adults alike, one of my favorites being Netflix’s Sweet Magnolias. I think the real issue is that there just isn’t one place where tweens/teens can find things that are made just for them in the way that there used to be.

I think a lot of the nostalgia online about “how good we had it” also comes from the much-noted lack of long-lasting shows today. A lot of shows on streaming have seasons that contain only 7 or 8 episodes, and may not last past a season 3 or 5. That’s just not a lot of TV. People miss shows where they could spend a lot of time with the characters. They miss 20-22 episode seasons, and shows that reach the 100 episode mark. But because studios and streaming giants have become so risk averse, they only stick with series that are 100% sure things, despite the fact that there are audiences for the projects that don’t quite meet that extreme threshold.

So, as a viewer, why risk getting excited about a new show that gets released on Netflix when the chances are very high that they cancel it right when you start to get invested?

So what do people do? They go back and watch their favorite shows from when they were younger. They watch Gilmore Girls or Friday Night Lights or Pretty Little Liars. There was a level of excitement and creativity in those teen shows when we were younger. A lot of times there were enough plot holes/insanity to match the excitement (I’m looking at you, PLL), but they were interesting. And now that creativity has mostly moved to streaming and has left network shows full of procedurals that have a strong formula but risk growing stale. And there’s a time and a place for procedurals (gotta love ‘em), but sometimes I want to watch a bunch of teenagers navigating some impossible situation that would never happen in real life. I want mess and drama.

Ten years ago, I could go on and on about all the shows I’d heard about that I knew were made for teens. Now, I can’t name a single popular teen show that isn’t Euphoria. And that show is not made for tweens. We could blame capitalism, as I usually do, for pressuring executives to cut anything that isn’t a complete smash hit on its first season out. We could blame streaming for coming in and destroying the model that had worked so well for so long. Or we could just go rewatch our favorites and relive the good old days. I have been meaning to get back into The Fosters…