When it comes to Young Adult films and television shows, females are dominating the genre’s viewership and streaming platforms are following the money and prioritizing those fanbases.
For years, Netflix has been a leader in the YA space, notably after the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy became one of the streamer’s first major YA franchises after the first installment dropped in 2018. The streaming giant saw an opportunity to tap into an underserved part of their audience at the time — younger females. That’s when they completely leaned into YA and were ultimately rewarded with stellar viewership that almost always follows for those titles.
This year, new seasons of Ginny & Georgia, Forever, XO, Kitty, Wednesday and My Life With the Walter Boys, as well as the movies My Oxford Year and The Life List all hit the platform. And to no surprise, all those titles reached the streamer’s Global Top 10 list, with YA titles being featured in 80 percent of the weeks this year alone.
According to Nielsen, Ginny & Georgia season three was in the Top 10 for seven weeks, with 10.06 billion minutes views, Wednesday for 10 weeks with 16.4 billion minutes viewed, Walter Boys for three weeks with 2.55 billion minutes, Forever for two weeks with 1.12 billion minutes, XO, Kitty for two weeks with 1.01 billion minutes and My Oxford Year spent two weeks in the Top 10 Movies list, with 735 million minutes viewed.
Jinny Howe, who oversees UCAN scripted series at Netflix, emphasizes the importance of YA at Netflix, as every branch of the streamer’s film and TV teams has worked on titles that appeal to that audience.
“The stories within this genre resonate so powerfully because they connect viewers across generations to universal life-defining moments that everyone can relate to,” she states. “These stories feel personal and epic all at once, and capture the excitement and uncertainty of core experiences like navigating identity, the thrill of experiencing first love, and learning from mistakes as characters come of age.”
It’s not just Netflix who has seen the potential with this audience demographic. Prime Video has also been slowly working to cement its authority in the YA genre.
The streamer not only scored a cultural phenomenon with The Summer I Turned Pretty, which released its final season earlier this year, but has found success with other shows and movies, such as We Were Liars, the Culpa Mía trilogy, Overcompensating and Maxton Hall — The World Between Us. Season three of The Summer I Turned Pretty alone spent 10 weeks in the Top 10 list, with 6.57 billion minutes viewed, according to Nielsen, and We Were Liars season one stayed on Nielsen’s Top 10 Original Streaming Series chat for three weeks, with 1.12 billion minutes viewed.
As Prime Video looks to expand its audience, it’s also found that younger females aren’t the only ones captivated by the genre. “As wildly important as it is to constantly be in touch with the younger viewers, what we find on The Summer Turned Pretty and We Were Liars, there’s also an older female piece to this that’s also part of this puzzle that are really important,” Laura Lancaster, head of U.S. TV development and co-productions at Amazon MGM Studios, says.
But why exactly do the YA shows and movies appeal to younger females? Dr. Yalda T. Uhls, a former movie executive turned developmental psychologist at UCLA, conducted a Teens and Screens study in 2025, which found a notable difference in what topics girls and boys between the ages of 10 and 24 want to watch.
“All of their top five really relate to YA: family life, relationships with parents, people with lives like my own, uplifting stories, friendships and social groups, empowering stories about women,” she says. “And frankly, Ginny & Georgia and Forever and The Summer I Turned Pretty all have that within it.”
And Uhls’ isn’t wrong. It’s clearly beneficial when the creative minds behind these types of shows and films listen to their audience. The creator of Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia, Sarah Lampert, has seen for herself that media often doesn’t prioritize the female experience in an authentic way, so she saw an opportunity to fill that gap with her show.
“I think what’s so important is to see authentic female characters that are represented in a way where they don’t have to be just one thing, where they’re allowed to be fully messy, good and bad, complicated, all of it, and just deeply, deeply human,” Lampert tells THR.
Melanie Halsall, creator of Netflix’s My Life With the Walter Boys, happily agrees with that sentiment. “Anything based primarily around relationships, friendships, romance and family dynamics is always going to be seen as female-focused, and I am happy to embrace that, as these stories have just as much rich drama as any other genre,” she says.
In an era when TV show cancellations are at a high, YA has proved durable for Netflix and Prime Video, as they both continue to make it a priority in their respective slates.
But could other streamers, such as Disney+ and HBO Max, catch up? So far, they don’t appear to be putting too much time and energy into the genre when it comes to their original content, as HBO Max has really only found success with their Emmy-winning series Euphoria, which premieres its third season next year. The streamer debuted its show Generation in 2021, but it only ran for one season. As for Disney+/Hulu, they haven’t released much YA content in recent years, as their popular shows Love, Victor wrapped its three-season run in 2022, The Bold Type ended after five seasons in 2021 and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series wrapped after four seasons in 2023.
“Over 2026, you’re gonna see a lot of shows launching on our service that are all part of a greater initiative, and it’s been very thoughtful, it’s been very curated, and it really has been a deep dive into what engages these younger female audiences,” Lancaster tells THR of Prime’s upcoming slate.
Howe adds that Netflix’s slate continues to span “modern takes on beloved classics,” including with the upcoming film, People We Meet on Vacation, as well as new seasons of other popular shows that are currently in production.
HiCelebNews online magazine publishes interesting content every day in the TV section of the entertainment category. Follow us to read the latest news.
