Kids’ Media Predictions for 2024
From the surge in AI-driven innovations to the evolution of gaming and virtual fashion, our predictions for the future of Kids Media in 2024 covers it all. Discover the impact on education, entertainment, and even High Street retail. Will voice tech and AI reshape how we interact with content? Read on to explore the changing landscape and the enduring power of great stories!
AI yi yi…
The buzzword of 2023 was “artificial intelligence,” as generative AI went mainstream. Debate around its impact ranged from genuine intelligence to artificial stupidity, as is common following the introduction of any disruptive technology. Would AI usher in utopia or dystopia, robot overlords or indispensable tools, digital schlock or new art forms? The answer is “yes.”?
For 2024, we can expect a rush of AI-equipped everything, followed later in the year by a calming influence as people try these emerging and fast-improving tools and separate signal from noise.
The “calming” is seen in?
The vast potential is seen in creators being able to produce games and experiences more quickly on the UGC gaming platforms, feeding the flywheel of more developers -> more games -> more players -> more revenue -> more developers -> repeat. AI isn’t being used only for complete worlds, but also to design and generate ownable items within games.
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Flat Screens?
Time spent with screens has now stabilised in most of the nations surveyed for Dubit Trends, our Global Kids’ Media and Tech Tracker. Post-COVID, “necessity” device use (i.e., homework or other education functions) has dropped as young people had had enough of virtual learning, but use for fun or personal engagement has remained high. The one area that is up strongly – by a fifth – is time spent playing games on tablet, smartphone and PC/Laptop.
For 2024, we can anticipate continued growth in gaming, though that term hardly any longer fits the growing range of experiences and functions accessed through the most popular platforms. Young people are watching “Bakugan” in Roblox, building with LEGO in Fortnite, and modelling Burberry outfits in Minecraft. All these platforms and others function, too, as social hangouts.
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iStreet to High Street
Virtual fashion exploded in 2023, with a flood of brands – from haute couture to casual to sporty – launching experiences stores and pop-ups in proto-metaverse spaces. Spending on virtual clothing and other items hit an all-time high, at $10 billion as players put as much or more effort into self-expression via their avatars as they do into their real-world appearance.
2024 is likely to see the first brand established online that migrates to High Street bricks-and-mortar retail.
At the same time, in 2024 Roblox is opening up opportunities for physical-goods commerce inside the game. This will be a fascinating real-time experiment in how gamers connect their digital and actual lives. We’ve reported for some time that young people spend as much or more on dressing and equipping their avatars as they do for themselves; when they are able to shop within their favourite virtual worlds, will that balance shift? Will “twinning” increase, with players purchasing identical items for themselves and their digital doppelganger?
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Talk to me…
Between smart speakers, voice-activated remotes, developing AI speech-to-text/image generation, the rising generation will believe that everything can be spoken to, in much the same way that kids born into the early touchscreen years thought TV screens and magazines could be tapped or swiped.
They won’t be entirely wrong, and as AI is integrated into voice tech, it will solve a current problem for young children, that conversation with a machine gives few clues how to adapt or adjust when there are unexpected results. Beyond kids, voice-to-text will facilitate accessible writing and ideation, generating books, scripts, games and more.?
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Measures of success
Will 2024 bring a reliable engagement measure for brands and IPs across the myriad platforms on which they reside. The gold-standard TV and radio rating services capture ‘reach’ and ‘time spent’ accurately and independently within their universes, but today’s audiences spread their media consumption in ‘snackable’ sessions across different media platforms. Further, they’re increasingly as likely to create around a favourite brand as they are to consume official content.
Look, for example, at the emerging uses of TikTok to share full-length TV shows and films in “chunks” (maybe Quibi – the defunct short-video mobile app – had a valid if ill-timed concept), and then to see the content remixed by the audience. This points up the need for a measurement technology that “tags” an IP so that engagement is noted wherever it appears.
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What Never Changes
It all starts with story - there is still an appetite for great stories with great characters and that stimulates kids’ imagination. This theme is recurring in our Dubit Trends data, whether it’s made-for-kids animation like Bluey and SpongeBob, general-audience shiny floor and big reveal shows that promote family viewing, or non-fiction stories, real experiences told by real people.