I highly recommend Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s new crime drama Adolescence (on Netflix) is very powerful and moving. It has initiated and important discussion about what adolescence looks like now, especially for young men.

The four-part series (which is filmed in a one take style) follows the fallout surrounding Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) who is 13 years old, after he is arrested for the murder of Katie, a girl from his school. It is inspired by the UK’s knife crime epidemic and has themes of online bullying, how men deal with anger, incel culture and why parents need to know what their kids are doing online in their bedroom.

In my opinion due to our internet age, children are being exposed to porn, particularly of the hard core variety way before they are able to process, understand or contextualize it in any way, this is perverting expectations of what relationships and sexual relationships should be. This is very frightening for boys and girls, and likely contributing to challenges in the usual teenage dating rituals.

Then adding to this, kids are living online, carrying around smartphones which gives them a potential way to find community. But also risks them finding the wrong community; or being targeted by the many predators online. It also allows them to see things in graphic detail that we were unlikely to see as children (terrorism, death, war, sexual fetishes etc).

We also know now that these devices are being used as tools for bullying children, literally to death (as it doesn’t stop when they get home from school, it is 24/7). Unlike us, if we made a mistake only a few people saw it, these kids have nudes/bullying videos etc being shared around online for the world to see forever.

Children are considered safe in their bedrooms, when the more likely place they will find a predator is online now! It is a really challenging and confusing time for parents. How do you keep your children safe? Should they be on social media? Won’t they see that stuff anyway on other devices/friends accounts? How do you protect your child from threats without stifling their development?

We also see a combination of a hateful brand of feminism teaching girls that men are all bad, masculinity is toxic and that they can and should live without men which is being met in the “manosphere” by characters like Andrew Tate who appear to be encouraging very toxic attitudes towards women and sex. So the sexual politics is really becoming an us against them.

It is also worth mentioning the Elephant in the room; that the writers were inspired by recent crimes in the UK, some of those are related to Extremist Islamist ideology. There are major issues in the UK, Ireland and parts of Europe in regards to increased immigration and some cultures who’s values don’t align with the west. Douglas Murray and Ayaan Hirsi Ali have written and spoken extensively on this topic. These important discussions are being shut down with accusations of Islamophobia and racism. We ignore these issues at our peril. We are willing to call out the far right extremists but conveniently ignore what is currently a bigger issue. 

In my opinion, children are also being dragged into adulthood and adult issues too quickly and being burdened with stories of things like climate catastrophe and unlimited genders; which only adds to their confusion and anxiety, and the belief that that they have no future and/or that nobody cares about them.

I don’t have all the answers here, however I do believe that kids should be allowed to and need to have a normal childhood, anything we can do to achieve that is a step in the right direction. These issues need to be discussed within your family so you can influence with your child, teach them good values and about rights and responsibility. The less online time they have, the better. Children need to learn social skills, learn how to talk to people, especially in person, have challenging discussions, debating ideas, learn how to interact with both sexes.

Please use this series as a way of initiating discussions, we can’t fix any of these issues if they can’t be discussed.

A great reference is Jonathan Haidt, who is an American social psychologist and author, I highly recommend his book The Anxious Generation.

I have discussed this topic on the latest episode (Episode 27) of What’s on My Mind with Fiona podcast, which is available in all the usual places and you can watch by clicking on the video below: