What Adolescence Reveals
Since its release in mid-March, the new Netflix drama series Adolescence has provoked some important conversations about digital safety, digital literacy and online abuse among young people. The four-part drama opens with the arrest of 13-year-old Jamie (Owen Cooper), suspected of the murder of a teenage girl found in a car park. From there, each episode zooms in on a different facet of the case — policing, social media, family, school, and community — gradually revealing the broader social, psychological and technological factors that have conspired to cause a teenage boy to kill a female schoolmate.
The series dramatises many parents’ worst nightmares about what their children might be doing and seeing online and shows how online and offline worlds are inseparable. However, rather than blaming either parents or the internet, it focuses instead on the complex constellation of social, cultural and technological conditions that have made this tragedy possible.
In this way, Adolescence succeeds in drawing attention to an uncomfortable reality: the growing radicalisation of young boys online, and society’s general failure to grasp its complexity. The series is particularly powerful in its portrayal of society’s broader reluctance to engage meaningfully with the emotional and ideological lives of boys, especially when doing so might implicate broader social norms and gender expectations. Contrary to popular discourses which posit fatherlessness and the feminisation of education as the source of boys’ problems, it shows how fathers and male teachers are often complicit in raising boys to adhere to precisely those patriarchal norms (aggression, objectification of women, repression of emotion) which harm both themselves and others.
The Classroom Isn’t a Cure: The Risks of Reactive Responses
Unfortunately, many of the public and political responses to the show fall into some of the traps it critiques. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Irish Tánaiste Simon Harris have stated that it should be screened in secondary schools, despite also describing it as difficult and harrowing to watch. While this suggestion might appear progressive on the surface, it is naive in its assumption that the outcome will necessarily be positive.
Teachers would need extensive training and support in gender studies, critical digital literacy and male supremacist online cultures, as well as adequate time and space in the curriculum, in order to make effective use of Adolescence in their classes. This is before we even consider how they might deal with misinterpretations, conflict, increased polarisation of boys and girls, and the potential emotional and psychological fallout for children who have experienced sexual violence or abuse.
In addition, the idea that screening a dramatic portrayal of violence will somehow scare boys not only oversimplifies the issue, but risks doing real harm. Such reactive strategies reduce the problem to identifying and isolating ‘bad’ boys – those who look or act a certain way, those who express awkwardness or social anxiety, or those who fit a vague stereotype of what an ‘incel’ should look like – while the broader structural and cultural roots of misogyny are brushed aside.
In doing so, these responses risk turning the classroom into another site of policing, stereotyping, and bullying, ironically echoing the dynamics that alienate boys like Jamie in the first place. Girls, meanwhile, may walk away from the show with a heightened sense of vulnerability.
Rethinking Adolescence: What Boys Really Need
If educators and parents are to respond meaningfully, the issue is not how to show boys the consequences of misogyny, but how to build spaces – at home, in schools, online – where they can develop into men, unhampered by pressures to objectify and dehumanise women, to be homophobic, to use violence or to repress their feelings. Boys need spaces where they can connect with one another to express vulnerability and develop empathy and respect for others, irrespective of gender.
Parents who are concerned about their sons exposure to porn, online misogyny and the manosphere can avail of a number of resources to guide them through difficult conversations. Most importantly, they should listen without judgement to why their children are attracted to these spaces, and try to open up constructive dialogues about harm, respect, consent and empathy, both online and offline. Instead of serving as a warning to children, Adolescence needs to be a wake-up call for adults.
Deniz Celikoglu and Debbie Ging
Resources
https://antibullyingcentre.ie/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/DCU-Influencer-Resource.pdf
https://www.webwise.ie/news/7-things-parents-can-do-after-watching-adolescence/
https://www.beyondequality.org/
https://antibullyingcentre.ie/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/DCU-Toxicity-Full-Report.pdf
LOOKING FOR PARTICIPANTS for Research Project on Boys becoming influenced by the Manosphere! 📣
Are you a PARENT concerned about the issues raised in Netflix’s drama series ‘Adolescence’?
I am Deniz Celikoglu (deniz.celikoglu@dcu.ie), a PhD student working at the DCU Anti-Bullying Centre researching parents’ experiences regarding their sons’ involvement in the manosphere. My focus is on understanding how parents experience their sons’ being ‘radicalised’ by masculinity influencers as well as those who may become drawn into incel and other ‘dark’ spaces.
I am conducting anonymous online surveys with both parents and boys aged 12 to 17.
In addition to taking the survey below, I would greatly appreciate it if you could encourage your son to take part in the separate survey designed for young boys aged 12-17
🔊 PLEASE SHARE widely with your professional networks and parent groups. Your help is invaluable. Thank you!
Survey for Parents/Guardians:
https://dcusurveys.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e38PcIyZ8fPSNiC
Survey for Young People:
https://dcusurveys.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eal3svyeaM9tgBo
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