REPORT

The Missing Middle

Reimagining a Future for Tweens, Teens, and Public Media

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting | Monica Bulger, Mary Madden, Kiley Sobel, Patrick Davison
Published: 2021

The Missing Middle: Reimagining a Future for Tweens, Teens, and Public Media. Report cover.
The Missing Middle: Reimagining a Future for Tweens, Teens, and Public Media. Report cover. Joan Ganz Cooney Center.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have partnered to better understand how young people are engaging with media today in order to help public media better serve Gen Z. As part of our By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences, we spoke with tweens and teens across the U.S. about how they spend their time, what they find interesting, how they find new shows, apps, or videos, what issues are important to them, as well as what misconceptions adults have about youth. We asked them for their advice about what media producers should do if they want to engage with people their age, and how their lives have changed during the pandemic.

The report features the voices of a generation of youth who crave authenticity and who want to be more than passive consumers in this rapidly changing media landscape. The participating 10-17-year-olds described how they seamlessly move across platforms and devices depending on their moods, interests, and access to certain kinds of connectivity.

[Text sourced from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center]

Download report