In the ten days since it was released, Netflix’s new drama, Adolescence, has garnered almost as many comments as it has viewers.  The drama, set around the murder of a teenage girl by a teenage boy – pupils at the same school – initially received almost universal acclaim.  Both the The Telegraph and The Guardian gave it five-star reviews, with the latter describing it “the closest thing to TV perfection in decades”.[1]  Over the last few days, though, the tone of the commentary has changed.  A vigorous debate has been sparked, encompassing attitudes to race, social media, sexualisation and misogyny.  None of this, however, addresses some of the deeper and very uncomfortable aspects of ‘where it all went wrong’.

Having worked as a school counsellor in a large secondary school, I regard the series as a timely warning to pay much closer attention to what is happening to our children – and what is enabling this to happen.  Two episodes in particular struck a chord with me.  Episode two is set in the school attended by the two pupils; many similarities emerge with the environment in which I worked.  Episode three focuses on a one-to-one session between the accused boy and a psychologist tasked with writing a report about him; too many times, I have sat with teenage boys in a similar situation and although thankfully none was accused of murder, the depiction of the wild swings between frightened boy and angry young man, and between swaggering bravado and a pitiful desire to be liked, are a devastating glimpse of the reality of that kind of work.

Several strands within Adolescence struck me forcefully, and shine a bright light on the world in which our children are growing up.  It is time for us to address these and I offer a brief exploration below.  In summary, these cover:

1.     School

2.     Social Media

3.     Sexualisation

4.     Society

1.   School

Schools are having a very hard time of it at the moment.  Increasingly, they are burdened with tasks which go way beyond their original remit.  From supervising toothbrushing to policing mobile phone use, it sometimes feels as if there must be precious little time left for teaching – for engaging with children’s natural curiosity, and opening their minds to the wonders of the world and the accumulated knowledge and skill of mankind, beyond their own understandably narrow life experience.  I can appreciate the frustration of good teachers and keen students, for whom this must be enormously difficult.

They are, however, immersed in an entirely different culture, as we see so clearly in Adolescence.  All the markers of a modern learning environment are there – the ‘eco’ corner; the celebration of diversity, equity and inclusion; the progress lanyards and the celebration of each child as a “rainbow of possibility”. There are the warnings about drug-taking and the usual complement of motherly, middle-aged women trying above all else to ‘be kind’.  All this stands in ugly juxtaposition with what is really happening.  Print all the slogans you want, be as non-judgemental as you feel you must be, but lurking just out of sight is a truth that will “chill the blood of any parent”[2] and which sooner or later we need to face, if we are to change the trajectory of the lives of too many young people.

It is understandable that the head expresses his relief that the “matter didn’t even happen on school property” – but when school staff share these sentiments, are they aware of how this comes across?  Only last week, in conversation with a group of young people, it was clear that some despise the depressingly prevalent attitude within the educational establishment, which merely sighs with relief that nothing untoward has happened on their watch, or on their patch, rather than addressing the fact that these things are happening at all.  When the overriding feeling among the adults – especially professionals engaged in education – at an atrocity committed by children is effectively, ’Thank goodness it didn’t happen here’, we should see how deeply in trouble we are as a society.

Students see the paradox that while everything appears to be about caring for the individual, the reality is that very few people actually do care.  When asked if there were any signs of his unhappiness, the teacher of the accused says, “I’m just his tutor… I teach history, I don’t see him.  I wouldn’t know”.  As I have seen, this is a world in which a friendless child can hide under a bustling staircase and eat their lunch alone each day.  Teachers are under enormous pressure, and too often – unreasonably – expected to be social workers too.  The demand for their time and input into pastoral situations often exceeds their personal and professional resources.  A shaken member of staff says of the incident, “everyone’s just devastated”, but in the largely lawless “holding pen” which many schools have become, as accurately described by one of the investigating police officers, it is hard for staff to offer much more. 

What is less excusable is the ignorance.  It is not unreasonable to expect those who work closely with young people to have a good general knowledge about current affairs, and especially matters which have a profound effect on their charges.  In Adolescence, we have teachers who clearly have never heard of ‘incels’, or ‘involuntary celibates’, around whom a particularly damaging culture has grown up.  Andrew Tate is merely a name the teacher has heard the boys mention.  Sadly, this is all too believable.  Apparently, some schools have decided that Mr Tate’s name should not be mentioned, for fear of ‘giving him oxygen’.  We need to recognise that failing to engage directly with a problem or threat, will not make it go away.

2.   Social Media

Internet use, and social media in particular, is undoubtedly responsible for what psychologist Jonathan Haidt has described as “the great rewiring of childhood”[3], and much of the adolescent misery which comes with that.  However, it is fair to say that as parents, and as professionals, we have not done our job adequately.  Ultimately, it is a parent’s responsibility to know what their child is doing, looking at and learning.  The difficulty is that screens are ubiquitous.  Several times recently young people have asked me why, if adults are so concerned about screen use, are they required to do all their schoolwork on tablets and use a smartphone to access school systems.   Devices have become intricately woven into the lives of both adults and children, and for busy parents, a way of keeping children occupied – and undemanding.

At some point, the harmless games of childhood are replaced with something more challenging, and the focus moves to social networks.  The dark corners of this world are very dark indeed, and the effects of lingering there are exceedingly damaging.  Many people will immediately think about the most obviously harmful content, such as pornography and material relating to self-harm, but ideas and ideology – across the spectrum from so-called ‘sickfluencers’, to political and religious extremists – provide hours of unfiltered footage to skew young minds.

Once-loose groupings of friends become set in stone, as ‘group chats’ emerge.  A young person is visibly ‘in’ or ‘out’ – and if they put a foot wrong, they can be ‘cancelled’ or blocked.  In the series, Adam – the police officer’s son – confesses to his father that he is on Instagram but never posts.  The price of posting the wrong thing is evidently too high.  This pressure always to be seen to be doing the right thing is extraordinarily anxiety inducing and frequently leads to young people doing things that they would never normally contemplate.  As Gabor Maté writes in his book, The Myth of Normal, in a chapter aptly entitled Forcing the Brain in the Wrong Direction, “many children these days live under the shadow of peer rejection, mockery or bullying – or may themselves become bullies”.[4]

This is magnified when that online world has taken on a disproportionate significance in a young person’s life, because opportunities for connection in the real world are limited.  As mentioned already, teenagers are curious and looking for answers – at a time when they should be engaging with questions about ‘life, the universe and everything’, too often the answers come in polarised, bite-sized chunks, designed more to stick in the throat than to be easily digested.

In an interview with the Daily T podcast[5], Stephen Graham, who co-wrote the series and also plays the young murderer’s father, emphasised that the whole point of Adolescence was not to focus on the usual markers of dysfunction, or the young people who are most likely to be drawn into a life of crime, but to demonstrate that in the right circumstances, any child can be sucked into a horrific and unimaginable situation, and do unspeakable things.  As another contributor to the podcast put it, too often we leave children asking “what does my childish brain do with this extraordinary, weird stuff that I’m seeing?”.  Unless we know what they are seeing, and are prepared to offer a robust answer, they will draw their own conclusions.

3.   Sexualisation (and Psychology)

Inextricably bound up with social media is sexualisation.   Sexual imagery, references and song lyrics are accessible to children from the youngest ages.  This has no doubt influenced the shocking findings in a recent report from the charity, Everyone’s Invited, which reveal the widespread existence of ‘rape culture’ in primary schools.  This includes “experiences of sexual harassment, groping, inappropriate touching and forced penetration during primary school”.[6]  In their annual report for 2023-24, the charity calls for young people to have “urgent access to high-quality, comprehensive, inclusive and relevant Relationships and Sex Education that reflects their lived experiences and is delivered by experts they resonate with”.  I hope I am not alone in believing that children should not be having ‘lived experiences’ of a sexual nature – and every responsible adult should be saying so, loudly and clearly.  It is the desire to be non-judgemental, and an unwillingness to state clearly what is right and wrong, which leaves children confused and vulnerable.  The very last thing children need is further exposure to the best efforts of sex educators, whose work has failed so calamitously and comprehensively to stem the tide of sexualisation and abuse.

In the Daily T podcast to which I have already alluded, host Camilla Tominey reflects that the “grown-ups have been asleep at the wheel”.  How else do we explain the willingness of adults to allow little girls to listen to explicit songs by the likes of the apparently sexually insatiable Ariana Grande and the scantily clad Sabrina Carpenter?  How is it that ‘drag queen story hour’ became a possibility?  How has the ‘genderbread person’ entered the classroom?  How have we allowed ‘sex positivity’ to leave a trail of destruction in its wake, in the form of the frightened and intimidated, rather than the titillated?  

Freya India is the thoughtful writer of the Substack ‘Girls’.[7]  She writes powerfully of how “children today are deprived of the most fundamental protection:  the passing down of morals, principles and a framework for life”.  Nothing illustrates the truth of her words more than Adolescence.  Mystified, the chief investigating officer muses, “How can you be involuntarily celibate at thirteen?”.  In a culture where sex is hard currency, these boundaries no longer exist.  Boys like the accused, Jamie Miller, are the casualties.

We are talking about children – as the murder victim’s friend, Jade, says of the accused’s best friend, “he’s only a little boy”.  We are failing to protect our children from situations in which they are left alone to handle powerful feelings for which they are hopelessly ill-equipped, while goaded on by peer pressure and an existential fear of being ostracised.   In Adolescence, a vulnerable child, entering one of the most challenging periods of human development as sexuality emerges, is mocked and bullied, on grounds he is barely capable of understanding.

At the same time, while misogyny is a buzz word currently, there is barely ever any mention of ‘toxic femininity’, often for fear of ‘victim blaming’.  This breaks the surface, briefly, in the person of the victim in Adolescence – a young teenage girl, whose photograph bears the now-requisite studied mix of cutesy and sexy – who saw fit to humiliate publicly a boy whose only crime initially was to ‘like’ her.  While this can never be an excuse for physical violence, we know that in the early teens, girls’ physical, mental and emotional development can run several years ahead of boys of the same age.  Too often, girls want boys to look at them – and then to be able to punish them for doing so.  We also know that the anger, energy and raging hormones of teenage boys needs channelling and managing.  Michael Conroy, founder of the charity Men at Work, which supports the development of boys and young men, believes that it is “our fault collectively that children are vulnerable”.[8]

It is often more convenient to pretend that these differences between the sexes don’t exist.  We demonise boys for the normal traits of masculine development, without providing healthy containment or outlets for that energy.  We choose to forget the sexual power young women can exert over young men, which all human beings have understood since Eve first persuaded Adam to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden.[9]  In our rush, rightly, to treat boys and girls equally, we forget that they – and their social and emotional needs – can be quite different.

Adolescence clearly demonstrates what happens when our children are unable to regulate their emotions – a skill learnt from the earliest years through deep, personal connection and the love of a consistent, responsible, responsive caregiver.   Jamie, the accused, insists throughout that he has done nothing wrong – he is unable to process the grim and violent reality of his momentary loss of control.  Jade, the victim’s best friend, lashes out at a friend of the accused, and later admits that she doesn’t know why she hit him.

As Professor Caroline Giroux of the University of California explains – in relation specifically to teenagers viewing pornography – early sexualisation violates “their spiritual boundaries and evolving beliefs around body, sexual development and intimate relationships, in a similar way that direct sexual abuse on their body does”.[10]

4.   Society

In his recent Richard Dimbleby Lecture, former England football manager Gareth Southgate addressed the situation facing boys today.[11]  “Young men are suffering”, he told the audience, before describing a generation for whom gaming, gambling and pornography have replaced meaningful connection and purpose in life.

As human beings, we are designed for attachment to our closest caregivers, and need meaningful connection throughout our lives, but especially as children and teenagers.  Far too many young people do not have these secure roots in their lives, leaving them extraordinarily vulnerable to peer pressure.  The loneliness and isolation of many teens is demonstrated by Jade, best friend of the murder victim.  Reflecting on her loss, she tells a teacher, “It’s not like I have anyone else”.  She then fretted that her mother would be annoyed if she had to leave work to collect her from school.

When assessing students in the school where I worked, one of the questions was. “Do you feel that you spend too much time alone?”.  The answer invariably was yes.  In Adolescence, after speaking to his son in school, the investigating officer remarks, “that’s the longest he’s spoken to me in a while”.  Emotional neglect is often unintentional.  Then we see the distress of the accused, Jamie, when the psychologist tells him that it is their final session.  The child’s torment is something I’ve experienced several times at the end of therapy.  Somebody, whom they have come to trust and with whom they can finally be themselves – as they swing between frightened child and aggressive adult – is walking away, as a professional rather than the parent they desperately need.

As the female police officer says in the series, “all kids really need is one thing that makes them feel okay about themselves”.  On the night of the crime, Jamie – a thirteen-year-old boy, in emotional turmoil – was roaming the streets of his home town alone at 9.30pm.  It was unlikely that this would end well. 

This is why parents matter so much.  “Children are not a distraction from more important work.  They are the most important work”, said Dr John Trainer (although the quote is often attributed to C S Lewis).  Somehow, with all the pressures of life in the twenty-first century weighing upon us, we have to find a way of living that out, everyday.  We need to ensure our children have our presence.  As Michael Conroy set out in his interview, we need to be “curious, dependable, to be there – really there”, every day.  It is no surprise that Jamie wanted his father to be his ‘appropriate adult’ during the legal proceedings.  Teenage boys have a visceral need for a father figure.

Conclusion

As a society, we need a complete reset.  As parents and professionals, we are failing children – boys and girls.  We are not nurturing them, protecting them or addressing their most basic needs – and their differences.  We need to re-imagine schools, so that they are places where all can flourish, and education rather than indoctrination or ideology rules; and we need to prioritise stable family life and parenting in a way which has not happened now for several generations.

The shift in the tone of commentary since Adolescence was released to my mind illustrates our desperate desire to look elsewhere ‘while wondering where it went wrong’[12] – at social media, at misogyny, at ‘the manosphere’.  Anywhere but at ourselves.  However, if we shift our gaze from where it matters most, we will continue to betray our sons and daughters.  Stephen Graham, playing the accused’s father, speaks for a generation of parents in the heartrending finale, when he says, “I’m sorry, son - I should have done better”.

I will close with the words of Erica Komisar, a social worker, psychotherapist and passionate advocate for children and parents:

“There is an overwhelming drive to attribute the breakdown of our children to social media, increased academic pressure, and shifts in gender and sexual norms.  But the inconvenient truth is that although the mental health crisis is multivariable, and outside forces – which do play a part – are stressful, we as parents are primarily responsible.  We are raising children who are self-centred, self-focused, and without the inclination or ability to take on responsibility or commitment, or to sacrifice for others.  This change is occurring despite the research which shows how happiness is tied to the ability to give to others, and giving to others is tied to happiness”.[13]

[1] Mangan, L, Adolescence – The closest thing to TV perfection in decades, The Guardian, 13 March 2025.

[2] Singh, A, Adolescence, Netflix review: Stephen Graham’s terrifying drama will chill the blood of any parent, The Telegraph, 19 March 2025.

[3] Haidt, J, (2024), The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Allen Lane.

[4] Maté, G, (2022), The Myth of Normal – Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture, Vermilion.

[5] The Daily T, Netflix’s Adolescence and Britain’s lost boys, The Telegraph, 20 March 2025.

[6] Tait, A and Prideaux, F, Rape culture exists at 1,600 primary schools, report finds, The Telegraph, 22 March 2025.

[7] Freya India, The Need for Adults, Substack, 10 December 2024.

[8] The Daily T, Netflix’s Adolescence and Britain’s lost boys, The Telegraph, 20 March 2025.

[9] The Bible, Genesis, Chapter 3 v6.

[10] Giroux, C, Early exposure to pornography: a form of sexual trauma, Journal of Psychiatry Reform (Vol 10, #15), 7 December 2021, https://journalofpsychiatryreform.com/2021/12/07/early-exposure-to-pornography-a-form-of-sexual-trauma/

[11] Gareth Southgate, The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC, 19 March 2025.

[12] Singh, A, Adolescence, Netflix review: Stephen Graham’s terrifying drama will chill the blood of any parent, The Telegraph, 19 March 2025.

[13] Komisar, E, Self-Focus or Sacrifice? What It Will Take to Rebuild the Mental Health of the Next Generation, ARC, February 2025.