On "Adolescence", and feeling angry about how we're failing our kids
I reflect on Netflix's *Adolescence* and the urgent conversations we must have about today's youth.
Over the last week or so, I’ve been glued to Netflix and watching Adolescence.
If you’ve missed the hype, here’s a quick summary: it’s a four part British drama about Jamie, a 13 year old boy who’s accused of murdering a schoolmate called Katie. As the episodes progress, we learn that he’s been sucked into the “manosphere” and his oblivious parents can’t understand how their clever, handsome son has been radicalised into a violent, misogynist criminal. Interestingly, the show is filmed in a single take, with some creative camera work (and incredible performances) to make it all fit together. It’s fantastic and you should watch it.
Okay, summary/promo aside, here’s why I want to write about it this week: this stuff preys on my mind all the time.
I love the internet. I grew up online: as a lonely teenager not much older than Jamie, I discovered “my people” on music messageboards and forums, which directly led to my career today (it turns out learning to code by making music websites is a good foot-in-the-door for a career in tech). I’m still a complete internet culture nerd and can’t tear myself away from memes, platforms and new technology.
The kids aren’t alright
So I’m sympathetic to the current generation of teenagers who equally want to be part of this world in 2025. I can’t imagine what going to school in these conditions is like: as a nerdy teen I was vaguely aware of the existence of a kind of parallel “grown up” life that some of my classmates were experiencing, with parties, sex, drugs and more. But this was only hinted at through MSN Messenger conversations or the occasional photo prints someone brought in (imagine!). Doing all of this in a world of TikTok and WhatsApp feels mildly terrifying.
The platforms themselves have an enormous amount of answering to do here. Facebook—literally complicit in genocide—have badly dropped the ball when it comes to child protection, and YouTube and co haven’t covered themselves in glory either. How can any individual reckon with the state-level might of these unaccountable tech giants?
Adolescence doesn’t try to answer these questions, or even lay the blame for Jamie’s actions at anyone’s feet. Andrew Tate gets a brief mention, and the show touches on Instagram as a means of cyberbullying (or stalking), but it does a fantastic job of representing the issues without trying to pithily answer them. There aren’t neat answers or logical explanations for this genuine issue that’s affecting boys and men.
But the role of parents is clear too: Jamie’s family notice him staying up late on the computer, but don’t involve themselves beyond a nagging reminder to “go to bed”. My son is almost six and I’m already feeling guilty that he has sometimes-unsupervised access to a cheap kid’s tablet. It’s locked down to BBC apps where I trust the content and producers, but he already talks about YouTube because of what he’s heard from schoolfriends who are allowed to use that platform.
The trail of destruction
The best scenes in Adolescence are the ones where Jamie is in the presence of authority figures: police officers, lawyers, and child psychologists. The standout episode features Jamie being interviewed by the latter, and we see the boy-Jamie, nervous and child-like, suddenly replaced by a towering man-Jamie, smashing cups off the table and yelling in the face of the tense woman trying to interview him about his emotions.
It’s the same kind of physical tension that makes gangs of young teenagers feel intimidating when you pass them in the street: the rational part of you reminds yourself they’re barely pubescent, but another, more primal, part of you is scared because you know their young minds don’t have the full, rational complexity of a fully-developed adult one. These kids could do anything, because they don’t fully understand the consequences. It’s probably why teenagers pass their driving tests much more quickly than adults (not that I’m bitter, having learned to drive at 32).
I think the show captures this tension powerfully. Jamie’s parents don’t really understand what he’s up to, and he and his teenage friends are barely able to articulate what’s causing them to hate women, because they lack the emotional vocabulary to express themselves. Jamie’s dad is weighed down by the pressures of masculinity: we see him driving his wife and daughter in his work van, laughing and singing songs, playing with them and smiling, until he arrives at the Hall of Manliness itself: a DIY shop. I watched as his shoulders stiffened, his smile faded and his face hardened – perfectly observed, I thought: the mask of masculinity is back on.
Why aren’t we talking about this?
I shared this show in a bunch of places: I found myself unexpectedly telling my new manager about it during pre-meeting small talk, and I reached out to a friend on LinkedIn to see if he’d caught it.
Most tellingly, I messaged a friendship group on WhatsApp with multiple couples—mostly parents—to get their thoughts on the issues the show raised. I got lots of thoughtful, engaged replies about the content: but only from the women. None of the men replied or shared their takes, though they’ve probably sat next to their partners on the sofa and watched it like I did, too.
Men: why aren’t we talking about this stuff? I don’t mean the TV show – I mean the issues it’s raising. Do we really kid ourselves that we understand the internet experience of the youth? Think of every horrible, shitty thing you saw online when you were a teenager. Remember how it felt? Because I do: the weird kid at school who’d bring in some printout from Rotten dot com and make everyone feel a bit gross and seedy afterwards. The boy who’d go around telling everyone about the sex life of some girl in another class who we barely knew, and yet he somehow felt entitled to share it with us. The rich lad who brought a porn mag to school and deliberately dropped it on the ground in front of the girls doing PE, knowing they’d see it. This stuff has been around forever, but the way it’s happening today? It’s weaponised.
Have the hard conversation with your sons. Bring up the awkward topics: yes, rape culture, consent, all the things you’d rather not be talking about, but that someone else is going to educate them on for you if you abdicate responsibility. The pushback against shows like Adolescence is that it’s another stick to beat men and boys with, and to drive them into the arms of the Andrew Tates of this world who tell them they need to be hard, cruel and violent to get what they want. We have to present a counter-narrative and show them how to live lives of warmth, humour, safety and love – because against these things, the men of the manosphere look faintly ridiculous and irrelevant.
The internet is huge and incredible and a force for good in the world. It’s equalised (some) things, brought freedom and unity to communities, but it’s also unleashed horrors. It’s not good enough to be passive about it and assume that the next generation will figure it out for themselves just because ours did. The rules—and the stakes—are different now, and being ignorant isn’t an excuse. We owe it the real Katies of this world.
Mini-feels this week
The dumping ground
I took some stuff to the recycling centre this week as our binmen have been on strike and we haven’t had more than two recycling waste collections since Christmas. While there, I donated our old pushchair:
We bought this thing back in 2019 as our first kid was on the way, and even today I’m still angry about how expensive it was. Two kids later and it’s done its time: but the wheels are wobbling, the brake doesn’t work safely and there are stains (whose origins I won’t question) which won’t wash out. It’s time.
I left it in the donation area of the recycling centre for anyone who has the patience to restore it, but for us we’re switching to the smaller, more foldable travel buggy at last. But chucking away stuff that the kids have grown out of still fills me with sadness. A year ago I had to throw away the wooden slats of a child’s crib which I’d lost all the metal fittings and fixtures for. Seeing the planks of wood land in the remorseless abyss of the shipping container felt like I was throwing away my own child’s infancy, much like leaving this pushchair and driving away felt like I was abandoning my baby with it.
Kids grow up and grow out of things and it’s totally normal, but maybe I’ll never grow up from this sensation of weeping for their lost youth, despite pushing 40.