Over 66% of Streaming Decisions Made by Parents Are a Result of Kids’ Content; Far More than Cost, Personal Preferences
With so many viewing options available on streaming, there’s seemingly something to watch for everybody. But for many families, it seems like what parents want is taking a back seat. According to a new study from young audience digital company SuperAwesome it appears that increasingly, the youngest people in the house are the ones in control of the remote, and therefore are determining which services are worth subscribing.
The study shows that in a majority of households in the United States, kids are instrumental in deciding what families watch. In 56% of cases, either children make the viewing decisions alone, or they are involved in the decision-making process along with the rest of the family. It is only in 43% of the surveyed U.S. households that the parents make the decisions on their own. The divide is even more stark across the pond. In the United Kingdom, children — solely or part of the family — make viewing decisions in 64% of households, while parents do it on their own just 33% of the time.
That type of focus on the family doesn’t just apply to what shows and movies end up on screens, but also which services families subscribe to at all. According to the survey, half of families in both the U.S. and the U.K. include their children in making decisions on which streaming services the household subscribes to. Perhaps more interestingly, the content needs and desires of the younger members of the family outweigh their financial implications for many homes. Despite inflation and rising costs of streaming services, families are willing to spend a little more as long as the content available is what their kids are interested in.
When it comes to adults deciding which streaming services to sign up for, their own personal content needs barely even register. Instead, how the individual platform’s content offerings appeal to their kids almost doubles the cost implications for U.S. parents. While U.K. and U.S. parents similarly aren’t concerned about their own viewing options, the British adults surveyed do seem to be more focused on the costs of subscribing to new streaming services.
Similarly, the survey found that 43% of decisions made by U.S. families to unsubscribe from a centered on the kids, a total that far exceeds both cost (19%) and a lack of content for adults (11%) combined; the numbers were similar to those in the U.K. as well (40%, 21%, 9% respectively).
In between subscribing and canceling, it is still the content needs of kids that drive household decisions, and it is increasingly becoming more important in many ways. In U.S. homes, 71% of respondents to the survey now say that wider kids-related concerns are a factor in deciding which services to keep, a jump of 31% over the 2021 version of the study. A family’s children being fans of the specific series and franchises found only on a platform also increased in importance over the past two years, going from 40% in 2021 to 50% in 2023. During the same time period, cost concerns dropped from 55% two years ago — closer to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — to just 46% today.
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Between fears of too much screen time and making sure kids aren’t being exposed to inappropriate content, the SuperAwesome study shows that finding content that’s safe and enjoyable for everyone in the family to watch is a major factor in determining streaming decisions.
VidAngel
VidAngel is a video streaming service that taps into your streaming subscriptions and filters out all the “bad stuff.” With customizable filters, language that you don’t want to hear or images you don’t want to see are automatically removed from what you are watching. While it doesn’t work for every service, movie, or TV show, there are thousands of titles available to filter – ranging from new releases to older films.