Group chats of people in their thirties, forties and fifties are aflutter with talk of teen-centric dramas like The Summer I Turned Pretty. Is it simply nostalgia, or something deeper at play? Kate Demolder writes.
When my peers and I were teenagers, in the low-rise era of the early-to-late aughts, arriving home from school would usually result in the unfurling of a teen magazine––Miss, Kiss, Seventeen, Sabrina's Secrets––one which would deal with the fundamental issues of adolescent life: fitting in, standing out and figuring the inner workings of the self out.
These texts, though easily dismissed, acted as a teenage lifeline, one definitively linked to the hardships of being not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman, and filled with guides on how to be the person you always wanted to be.
Today, these same people – with fewer low-cut jeans and more mortgage repayments – are turning to millennial depictions of that time to gain those same feelings. And, streaming services are taking their desires to the bank.
The Summer I Turned Pretty (TSITP), Euphoria, Adolescence, Ginny & Georgia, Sex Education, Heartbreak High, Heartstopper, Outer Banks and Riverdale are teen-centric dramas that regularly sit at the coveted most-streamed spot atop Netflix, Hulu, Disney and HBO, allowing the familiar feeling of nostalgia for the golden age of teen media to wash over a demographic happy to pay monthly fees.
(According to data collated by the New York Times, TSITP’s main audience is 25 to 54-year-old women.) But what’s causing this return to centre?
And why are women in their 30s, 40s and 50s choosing teenage fanfic over media directed at them?
In 2025, it seems that few specific youth-directed publications exist. Fewer still are the kind that would share ways to make your crush notice you.
That said, not all teen media were cookie-cutter. Teen Vogue, notably, has been redirecting preteens towards social activism for some time now, and neither are today’s teen dramas.
Sex Education, a show that centres on the son of a sex therapist who shares bona fide sexual and mental health information to the masses, sits alongside Adolescence, a teen drama about the impending manosphere and gun crime, and Euphoria, an unsanitised and hi-fi look at the pressures, drugs and modern disgruntles of teenage life, to provide an education on Generation Z, the first sweep of digital natives and, thus, uniquely vulnerable to a myriad of potentially dangerous choices.
For those of us whose birthdays fall before the millennium, this content is genuinely interesting in that, like a well-funded documentary, it shines a light on a group we know little about.
For parents, it can be a lifeline to understand common parlance to very real dangers, and for everyone else, it provides a heightened view of the unknown, one which proves entertaining under a spotlight.
"I often recommend parents to watch these shows either before their kids do or with them," Clinical Psychologist and Lecturer at University of Galway, Dr Malie Coyne, says. "It allows you to see the signs of the times, bring up difficult conversations or be aware of their realities."
For people without children, the pull sways a little more reparative. Indeed, Netflix and its competitors have seemed to tap into a market that few producers consider when creating a project; one of social rejects.
A particularly cutthroat and impressionable time, teenage years often come with the triptych of self-consciousness, pain and embarrassment. For those who feel that in their chest - oftentimes, even those you previously considered apex predators do, too - watching relatable characters relive a projected adolescence can oscillate somewhere between wistful and triggering.
That trigger point can often send a signal to a time (one’s teenage years) when such feelings felt too big to process, but today, they can sit just right.
"Teen dramas revisit a time when our own identities were being formed," Dr Coyne says. "We were experiencing really important firsts, emotions were intense, and those feelings last for a long time; I only recently partook in a course where I was helping to train psychotherapists to work with teenagers, and very quickly, each of them could verbalise how they felt throughout their teenage years themselves.
"Watching these shows is a safe, direct way to revisit those complex emotions without reliving them directly. Almost like a gentle exposure therapy where you can remember the past, but you don’t have to live it out."
Many of these shows––TSITP, Euphoria, PEN15––have caught onto this, and as such make use of the trappings of an early-aughts youth to attract such an audience – chokers, straightened hair, U2’s With Or Without You – to unsparingly unfurl the mentality of coming-of-age in the dawn of the internet.
Cliques, cattiness, body counts and frigidity punctuate the show’s messaging, as does puberty, cruel jokes and a level of bullying that, in adulthood, would warrant police interference.
The genre’s mental proddings have resulted in a new kind of categorisation, 'traumedy', one which sees the highs and lows of puberty cut and thrust with the same intensity as a courtroom drama. Indeed, an adult propensity for teen dramas can indicate our cultural moment.
"Shows like these helped us to take a break from the grim days," Psychotherapist Dr Richard Hogan, says. "When the world feels a bit harsh, which it does today with the likes of Gaza, Ukraine and political assassinations, we can look backwards to these coming-of-age shows which capture something about the human spirit.
"Teenagers are also often seen to be in an intermission type space, which allows us to project our ideas onto them. It was The OC in my day, it’ll be another soon."
Relating to portrayals of teenage years, for reasons both good and bad, also allows us to peek into what some media scholars have dubbed the familiarity scale. In higher-brow pieces, with much more at stake, anything could change the narrative.
Whereas the comfort in the likes of TSITP lies in the age-old questions: Who will she end up with? Will it be the right decision? Knowing the boundaries of a show’s script is inherently comforting, particularly in a time of near-consistent upheaval. In fact, our bodies reward us for doing it.
"Watching familiar favourites or shows that are relatively low-stakes boosts our moods," says Dr Coyne. "That familiarity releases dopamine and oxytocin, which calm our nervous systems."
With the process of developing a script for a teen production, the consideration of mistakes must keep rerouting itself towards the top. Teenage years are a time for them to be made, figured out and enjoyed with retrospect. By way of both hustle-culture and always-on-technology, mistakes are slowly becoming less acceptable.
Though some are graver than others, the fact is that today’s preteens and teenagers are stuck in a cycle of unique difficulty, one which does not let up even when they crawl into bed. Should they say, post or do something others consider unworthy, their mistakes are illuminated under myriad spotlights and considered contrary to the status quo.
Teenage productions allow these mistakes to grow legs and be shown for what they really are: entertaining tidbits or life lessons that rarely define.
Furthermore, watching other people, real or not, make mistakes reminds us that turbulence is universal.
"And that lands with people of all ages because we can often feel in a state of flux, or like we’re in an identity crisis - something most teenagers feel," Dr Coyne continues.
"Looking back on situations that feel familiar to our younger selves - school, first relationships, our first drink - allows us a bit of a clue of who we were before life got complicated, before we had to commit to a job for money or marry a person because it was expected."
That said, the main pull for shows like these seems to be that they take both themselves and their audiences seriously.
The wants of women and girls are routinely belittled, leading many to seek validation in the form of shows that ask them to lean in. In this way, Gilmore Girls, The OC, PEN15, Euphoria, or To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before paint a revealing picture because of the forces that leave gaping audiences out.
Girls’ wants, needs and desires seem to dominate the shaping of cultural narratives, so why are they routinely belittled? The reality is, of course, complicated. But in a world where women are so frequently pitted against each other, it’s refreshing to encounter hoards of them rooting for a character who deigns to represent them, flaws and all.
