Fair to say, many marketers develop kid-targeted strategies based on the idea that what’s trending with teens and tweens is trending with younger kids.
But in reality, teenagers/tweens and elementary-aged kids participate in trends in different ways.
It’s not until kids approach puberty that they more fully develop their own independent tastes, discover their own voices, and enter the social and cultural discourse. As this happens, teens and tweens create a place for themselves in the world, use media and social media as a way to ‘plug in’ and discover platforms to express themselves, which paves the way for trends to emerge often in response to the world around them.
Elementary-aged kids don’t operate the same way. Their interests and tastes are based on things immediately in front of them and are often strongly influenced by their parents. Their perspectives are narrower, and their social spheres don’t function autonomously yet. Developmentally, it’s hard for them to identify their own style or values. They have far less awareness of the world around them. All of this means that trends among younger kids can be harder to identify and less responsive or connected to what’s happening in the world.
If there’s a difference between teen trends and kid trends, what do trends among younger kids look like?
Often trends among younger kids center on the toys, interests, content or games they engage with in their everyday lives. Consider some examples. We’ve all seen how pop-its have replaced fidget spinners as the It Toy. If you have a younger child, you haven’t been able to avoid singing along to Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” And be on the lookout – the hamster is predicted to become the new llama in 2022.
Less often do we see social or cultural trends among younger kids. Most aren’t on social media yet. They have far less awareness of societal issues or pop culture, and many kids have a limited familiarity with celebrities, media personalities and music artists. The big exception to this are YouTube influencers who kids know quite well because they spend so much time consuming YouTube content.
Do trends overlap between teenagers and younger kids at all?
They do, thanks to the trickle-down effect. Because kids are a step removed from the broader world around them, a pervasive trend can reach them, but more slowly. Think about the Dab or the Floss. Dabbing may have started in 2015, but it was still going strong among kids in 2018-2019. The Floss started as a social media fad in May 2017 after it was performed on Saturday Night Live, and then it spawned a craze in kids when the dance was featured on Fortnite months later.
Here's what to take away about trends among younger kids:
Even though something is popular among teens, that doesn’t mean it is automatically interesting, or even relevant, among younger kids – because teens engage with the world in a way that is different from the way kids engage with the world.
That said, it’s important to keep track of teen trends to anticipate what might trend among kids in the future – as teen and tween trends (or versions of them) can eventually trickle down to younger kids.