Adolescence about far more than troubled teens

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This article was published 05/04/2025 (508 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I finished watching Adolescence this week, the groundbreaking Netflix crime drama that’s got parents panicking and influencers pontificating.

The hard-hitting TV show racked up more than 96 million views in three weeks, shooting up the streaming giant’s Top 10 global chart.

Can I tell you something? I’d been putting it off for days.

I’d seen posts about it online, which I studiously avoided, partly because I don’t like spoilers (sorry if you haven’t watched it yet, but I am going to spoil it for you) and partly because I suspected it would unearth uncomfortable truths.

A ‘why’d he do it’ rather than whodunnit, Adolescence left me devastated on the sofa, at a loss for words as the credits rolled after the last episode.

The four-part limited series, set in a city in the north of England, starts with a bang as a swarm of police flood the Miller family home to apprehend Jamie, the 13-year-old son, for killing his classmate Katie.

Each episode, shot in one unflinching continuous take, is a punch to the gut.

From the arrest at home and ensuing chaos at the police station of Episode 1 to the heartbreaking final instalment, which takes place 13 months later, depicting a family coming apart at the seams, Adolescence is an impressive, utterly realistic depiction of teenage-hood and seething male fury, with breathtaking acting from each cast member.

It was a very hard watch, but I could not take my eyes off the screen, as much as I wanted to.

It’s disconcerting because it reveals that the bogeyman we’ve been warned about might not be a man at all; he could be a baby-faced boy from a loving family, a boy who still sleeps in a bedroom with outer space-themed wallpaper, the universe watching over him as he slumbers.

A boy who asks for a computer in his bedroom, who checks Instagram on his phone, who sometimes posts pictures, who seeks approval from his peers.

It’s all so ordinary, so mundane, so commonplace… which makes it all the more scary.

His radicalization — this normal child from a normal family who commits an abnormal and unspeakable act of violence — takes place in the safety of the home.

Holed up his room he scrolls late into the night in the manosphere, a cluster of malignant sites operated by ‘men’s-rights’ influencers and pickup artists who blame women and feminism and society for their lack of romantic success.

Sites where impressionable minds, enamoured by the coded language of misogyny, are taught that women are inferior to men and that gender-based violence is justified, as long as it’s a girl who is being hurt.

Yes, Adolescence is a work of fiction. But it’s not so far from truth as to make it unbelievable.

Co-creator and co-writer Stephen Graham, who also stars as the boy’s father, Eddie, came up with the idea after violent stabbings in the U.K. caught his attention.

In 2021, in Graham’s home city of Liverpool, Ava White, 12, was fatally stabbed by a 14-year-old boy. In 2023, 17-year-old Hassan Sentamu stabbed Elianne Andam, 15, with a kitchen knife outside a shopping centre in Croydon, south London.

This could happen to any child; this could happen to any family.

The show left an indelible impression on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, prompting him to back Netflix’s initiative for it to be streamed for free in secondary schools across the country.

Everyone from pop-culture commentators and mommy bloggers to Reddit posters and Instagram influencers has a take on it, pointing the finger at everything from the lack of positive male role models to archaic education systems to the insidious effects of social media to too much TV to too little TV to a lack of time spent outdoors.

It’s hard to know who to listen to when there’s so much noise. But amidst all the chatter, an account I follow on Instagram posted something that struck a chord with me.

Jessica VanderWier, the psychotherapist behind Ontario-based Nurtured First Parenting, believes rising social media and smartphone usage among children are symptomatic of a larger issue. She says kids are craving attachment figures and when parents aren’t available, they turn to their peers — either in real life or online — for a sense of belonging.

VanderWier argues that parents should build strong relationships and connections with their children to reinforce the parent-child bond, pointing to pivotal scenes in the series that portray the disconnect within the Miller family that led to the radicalization of their son.

Parents should prioritize family time, she advises in a series of posts published on March 29. “Kids need us to spend time we are able to spend truly with them. Maybe this means only doing one sport or prioritizing one lazy day together at the weekend doing activities together.”

It’s certainly food for thought.

I am a mother to a child who has been increasingly asking for a smartphone. She wants to chat to her friends on apps like Kids Messenger, which she assures me is safe because “grown-ups can’t get into it, Mum, only children can.”

Kid, I want to say, it’s not just predatory grown-ups I have to worry about now. It’s children barely older than you who might do you harm.

Maybe I am overreacting. Maybe this harrowing scenario won’t become a horrifying reality. Maybe we’re blowing it out of proportion, demonizing smartphones and social media in the same way video games, TV, comic books and rock ’n’ roll have been accused of corrupting youth down the generations.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But there’s no denying the monster has crawled out from under the bed; the question is what are we going to do about it?

Maybe Starmer is wrong. Maybe it’s us parents — and those considering parenthood — who should be made to watch Adolescence.

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca