Adam Sandler is Gen Z's favorite celebrity, thanks to Netflix and nostalgia

• A new survey of 10,000 teenagers found that their favorite celebrity is Adam Sandler.
• Yes, the Sandman once again reigns supreme - and it's probably because of nostalgia.
• Sandler's big Netflix deal has kept him front and center in teens' favorite way to consume entertainment.

All across the economy and the US, everything old is new again: It's a never-ending infrastructure week, the debt ceiling is causing a crisis, and, strikingly, the teens love Adam Sandler.

Adam Sandler? Yes, really: A new survey from Piper Sandler (no relation) of 10,000 teenagers across 44 states found that the Sandman is now teens' favorite celebrity.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, Sandler is also a Netflix powerhouse. He flexed his business savvy by signing a deal with the streamer all the way back in 2014 to make four movies. The New York Times reported that those movies would have a "similar-size budget" to a movie released in theaters.

In a statement to the Times on the deal, Sandler said: "When these fine people came to me with an offer to make four movies for them, I immediately said yes for one reason and one reason only ... Netflix rhymes with Wet Chicks."

More crucially, the Times reported that Sandler's deal was a first for Netflix - and seems to have paid off for both parties. Sandler's deal was reupped in 2017 for four movies, and then reupped yet again in 2020. Insider's Travis Clark reported that Sandler's film "Murder Mystery" was Netflix's most watched movie in 2019, with Netflix saying that 83 million households watched the movie in its first four weeks.

In fact, the streamer said that since Sandler's first Netflix movie premiered in 2015, its users have spent 2 billion hours watching his movies.

The same Piper Sandler survey reveals that, whether he knew it or not, Sandler was betting on the right horse for continued popularity with teens. It showed that Gen Z spends 32% of their daily video consumption on the site, slightly edging out YouTube, where teens spend 30% of their daily video consumption. Hulu came in a distant third, and big Hollywood streamers like HBO Max and Disney Plus don't make a dent.

Ben Fritz's 2018 book, "The Big Picture," detailed how Hollywood was changing on the eve of the streaming revolution, focusing on Sony Pictures' relationships with its main stars, Sandler and Will Smith, and their films' diminishing returns. Since then, Sandler has been wise in his choice of a successor to Sony.

There may also be a reason beyond technology that Sandler is connecting with teens. It's likely not his movies alone. After all, as Insider's Clark reported, all of the movies that his production company has made for the streaming service have gotten a "rotten" score on Rotten Tomatoes.

That's where the power of nostalgia consumption comes in. As Insider's Hillary Hoffower reported, Gen Z has seized upon nostalgic trends - yes, prep is back - in an effort to define a new decade and as a response to the instability of the pandemic. That might also be why collectors are dropping thousands on kids' toys.

Today's oldest teenagers were born in the early 2000s, but they love the aesthetics of the '90s. That means that Sandler classics like "Billy Madison" play perfectly into their nostalgic impulses. It also doesn't hurt that Sandler was pumping out movies like "Click," "You Don't Mess with the Zohan," and "Grown Ups" in the late 2000s and early 2010s, perhaps defining Sandler as a figure of childhood mirth for teenagers.

So, by striking an early, groundbreaking deal with Netflix, Sandler cemented his place in the teen psyche. This, it turns out, is how he wins.