Do teenagers like animated shows nowadays?

mwha1369

New member
When i went to high school (94-98), pretty much nobody even talked about animated shows (aside from maybe during nostalgic "hey remember (x)?") conversations, the exceptions being stuff like south park and the simpsons. But im wondering if thats still the case nowadays. Of course, i dont mean the likes of adult swim shows or the fox sitcoms, but shows aimed at a somewhat more "general" audience like phineas and ferb, regular show, young justice, etc. If anyone here either is a teenager or is around teenagers a lot, will they admit to liking cartoons, or is it still something thats considered "kids stuff" if its brought up at all?
 
My high school was a lot different, almost everyone I knew watched X-Men: TAS, Spider-Man: TAS, The Tick, Superman: TAS, Spawn (HBO), and some even starter watching Pokemon once that hit big in the late 90's. There was a general buzz about these sows and people constantly talked about them at the cafateria tables and in studies and whatnot, I'd imagin that this is still the case today but just with a different crop of programs, maybe more along the lines of what's on Adult Swim at night or the latest Family Guy or something.
 
I'm 18 and have never stopped watching animated shows on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. Currently I enjoy Regular Show, Garfield Show, MAD, Pokemon Black and White, SpongeBob, and Penguins of Madagascar. I also watch the fox animated shows Family Guy and The Simpsons but as you mentioned they are for older people anyways.
 
Being one, I can say that most of my school and myself will watch "Adventure Time", "Regular Show", "Phineas and Ferb", etc. As well as older (90's) shows. Of course they watch AS and FOX ones too(i.e., FG, American Dad!, etc.). Except a lot of them are too dumb to realize it comes on FOX -.- But, they (Or we) still watch animation, nonetheless.
 
I went to high school from '04 to '08. I remember overhearing several conversations about Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. I am sure there was more but that is the first that comes to my mind.
 
I'm 17 and I've always watched cartoons. I know a decent amount of people at my school who still do too. I also know plenty who only watch Jersey Shore and other shows of equal sophistication, but I digress. Family Guy and other Animation Domination shows as well as South Park are more popular than general animation, but I know a few people my age who watch Phineas and Ferb, Regular Show and Adventure Time. So is general animation popular with my age group? Not as much as I'd like, but obviously the audience is there to an extent. Nostalgia among seniors and my fellow juniors is probably a good part of all that too, as talk of old Nicktoons and Cartoon Cartoons is as common as Regular Show or Adventure Time talk if not more rampant.
 
Hmm. I'm 20 now.

So I was a teen from (2003-2010). You can just imagine how many awesome cartoons/anime aired during those 7 years. Of course, I was never a follower. Never compromised my interests...so I'm in the minority.
 
From what I notice, yeah.

A good majority of people around here in that age group still talk about and occasionally support a lot of their nostalgic favorites, including SpongeBob, although I'm not sure if too many of them still watch it every week. Whenever I mention to my friends that something like Looney Tunes, Dexter's Laboratory or Rugrats is airing again, they try to watch them when they can and enjoy them as much as they did when they were younger. Heck, I was talking to one of my friends about Jonny Quest earlier, and he's bound to watch some of the original episodes again soon.

Then I know a few people who watch newer series like Phineas & Ferb, Young Justice, Adventure Time, and even the new My Little Pony- mostly girls on the last one, but I got some male friends to watch bits of it, and they understand why it has such a strong following out of the demographic.

And of course there are the Disney films, but that's an entirely different conversation I'll have to share with you guys. To cut it short here, just about everyone from where I am is a fairly big fan of the mouse house.

I'm the only one who actively keeps up with the industry among my friends, but when the getting's good, I'll try to sell something to my friends. A lot of people I know are open to new things, even if they're airing on Cartoon Network before [as].

I think my generation, at least this sanction, are a little more open to animation than previous ones is because we just had better shows growing up back then and more ways to access cartoons. I know everyone's childhood is different, but I can't imagine too many teenagers in the 80's going around saying "hey man, new Super Friends is on! We should totally watch it", even if Super Friends was their favorite show growing up in the 70's. True, nostalgia for the 80's was in big demand a few years ago and is still popular today, but that type of childhood yearning is more prevalent during a later part of your life than while you're in high school or college.

The Disney, Nick, Warner and Cartoon Network shows just have aged better in the eyes of our generation, and watching a lot of them now, they seem to hold up fine and contain means of entertainment we didn't notice when we were younger. And since a lot of us grew up on series still airing today or have been recently like SpongeBob or Ed, Edd, n' Eddy, we're likely to stick around to see what's on Nick and Cartoon Network and keep an eye on that as well.
 
Well, I am on high school now, and yeah, most TV conversations are like Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, Big Bang Theory, 2 & 1/2 Men and when it gets to animation, just The Simpsons. Nick & CN shows come up in 'remember what we watched when we were little...' I think some people do watch P&F or Spongebob & such, they just don't say it.
 
A fair amount of people people at my high school really like Adventure Time, Flapjack and Regular Show.:) Also some people watch Phineas & Ferb (or at least wear their t-shirts). I know one other person who watches Generator Rex, but I'm sure there's more than that. Also, a lot of people talk about Family Guy and South Park of course.

Occasionally we talk about older shows like Teen Titans or Danny Phantom. Some people talked about Avatar a bit when the movie in theaters, and I'm sure that'll pick up again once the new series airs.

One time I was watching Rocko on the computer in the library and these 2 girls told me they loved that show. Even my teacher (who's kind of young) said she remebered that show.:p

And of course, TONS of people at my school love anime. One of the biggest clubs at my school is anime club, it's pretty popular there, I think more so than American cartoons, but a surprising amount watch Regular Show (I say it's surprising because a lot of them are the types to generally turn their noses up at Western cartoons).

So yes, animated shows are quite popular at my high school, in one form or another. And I think this does have to do with my generation being more open to cartoons. I mean just the other day I pratically got one the "popular" guys (at my scool we don't really have the whole cliche popular clique, but there are those kind of preppy types that are well known by everyone) to watch Regular Show!:anime: He said he was going to watch it but I don't think he did, but I digress, the point is he seemed genuinly interested in it.
 
I went to high school from 2003 to 2007 and right now, I'm twenty-two. Though, when I was a teenager, I enjoyed watching cartoons much more than most of the other programs that were aimed at my then-age demographic. As for my high school itself, I don't remember a lot of conversations about cartoons. I think there were a couple of times where they mentioned The Simpsons and South Park. There might have been talk about Avatar the Last Airbender at some point and some of the older shows on both Nick and Cartoon Network. I know that Pokemon came up, but only when someone was asking if Brock's eyes were open or not. Although, I do remember seeing kids playing FireRed/LeafGreen, Emerald and Diamond/Pearl during free periods and in the hallways. I never really felt comfortable to start a conversation about cartoons with my peers, but I'm pretty sure cartoons came up quite a few times during our free periods.
 
From experience, it seems like people in their teens and older are some of the biggest/loudest crowds for fans of animation/anime. In Junior High School, kids were A LOT more cynical in my school than when I went to High School and everyone was cool with who you were, sexuality-wise, interests, race, etc.

I felt some need to hide the fact that I liked certain stuff that wasn't "cool" (IE: Liking Invader ZIM was ok, but Pokemon was not), but when I went to High School, I would see everyone with little buttons of their favorite characters on their bags, you would doodle a picture of Foster's Home and everyone would leap in excitement when they passed by you, and if you ever said, "Hey, do any of you watch Chowder?" so many people would shout, "HECK YES IT'S MY FAVORITE SHOW!".

I'm not sure why that was. It could have been the schools I went to (A private school for elementary + junior, then a large public school for High) or if a lot of people have had those same experiences and it has something to do with the mentality of each age group. I just know that peer pressure was a lot more visible in Junior High School than anywhere else.
 
Well, in my school we've talked about Spongebob, Phineas and Ferb, and Pokemon was brought up once, because a girl started singing the song. I also talked about Regular Show and Adventure Time with a classmate of mine. I've always enjoyed cartoons, more then live-action.
 
I think it goes without saying that there are plenty of teens out there who still like to watch cartoons... and there's nothing wrong with that, at all. There's even adults that like to watch cartoons, and I don't see a problem with it either. I turn 22 in this coming October, and I still like watching the ones I used to watch on DVD, and a few newer ones like Ben 10: UA/AF and Generator Rex (to be honest, those are the only newer ones that I've ever caught up on). I still like watching Spongebob every once in a while... but to be honest, all in all, I don't actually watch that much tv anymore.

When I was still in high school, there were quite a few people who liked watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, Simpsons, and South Park. I only ran into a couple others who liked watching Teen Titans and Code Lyoko as much as I did. I currently work with another girl my age who also really liked watching Kim Possible when it was still airing (she was even excited when I told her that you can get the entire series on iTunes, save for a couple episodes). The other cartoons that I've heard people talk about were the Nick, Disney, and CN shows from the 90's also (The Disney Afternoon, Doug, Ed Edd and Eddy, Rocko's Modern Life, Hey Arnold, ect.) Really the only teens in my school who either didn't like watching cartoons or who didn't dare talk about them in front of their peers were the snobby popular kids, incidently.
 
I can't speak for teenagers today, but when I was in high school (1993-1997), people in my school were into cartoons. I remember one time on the bus going home from school, some kids from my school were sitting in the back of the bus talking about their favorite cartoons past, and even present (when that time was the present). I remember a girl in my grade liking Animaniacs. I'm sure guys were into Spider-Man, X-Men, and Beast Wars. Girls especially wore clothes that were Looney Tunes-related.

During my time in high school, I personally watched Garfield and Friends, Captain Planet, and Mega Man on Saturday mornings. I even watched Doug on occasion, and a guy in my grade admitted to watching that too when we were sophomores. Although not a cartoon, yet still meant primarily for kids, there were a good number of people in my school who were also fans of Power Rangers.

Some time back, I was chatting on Facebook with this guy from my high school, also in my grade. It was at the time when people were using cartoon characters for their profile pictures. He had something Thundercats-related. He said he has the DVDs, and I told him that a lot of the cartoons from our time are out on DVD. So he threw examples at me, and I'd tell him whether they were out on DVD or not, or if they were going to be on DVD in the future.
 
It's almost everywhere in my school, I tend to have conversations with various groups of my peers (As I'm the ''jumper'' type of student, with no specific group that I hang out with.) We tend to bring up retro Cartoon Network shows, and I recall loosely bringing up Nicktoons at one point. Then afterwards we'd talk about how the network's direction is today.

I have a friend whom I talk to about each week's new Regular Show episode. We discuss parts that made us laugh etc. etc. (Although I'm the type of person that mentally laughs and rarely ever physically laughs.)
 
Hard to say. TV ratings for cartoons certainly aren't what they used to be, but maybe because it's so spread out now. Actually, I'd really like to know what kids and teens are into now. But I don't get the feeling that cartoons unite and inspire young people like they used to in previous generations.
 
I admit my answer might be biased, since I hang out with the "arty" crowd, bit from what I've seen cartoons of today and decades past are popular with the kids in my high school. I frequently see character merchandise (usually Perry the Platypus/ Agent P as of late) being worn. Talking about cartoons aren't looked down on either.
 
I am 19 years old, and I still watch animation. To me, there is no shame in watching cartoons unless its something you dont want to look at. I just prefer good quality animation with strong stories and great characters. But as for high-school teenagers in general. I would say it would be like fining a needle in a haystack. However your bound to find teenagers into the Japanese cartoons. For cartoons outside of Japan its hard to find.

Although depending on the school, you can either find a lot or a few. I did came across a few people in my school who were wearing Adventure Time shirts. A person in my math class did a sketch of Regular show, so I came across a few teens who had admitted to like cartoons.
 
Back
Top