Netflix's Adolescence is making parents panic about what kids do online — but should they be?
The series has touched a nerve and exposed our lack of media literacy, says expert
Netflix's chilling new drama Adolescence isn't scaring parents because it's unthinkable that a seemingly sweet and innocent boy could be ripped from his childhood bed by police, accused of stabbing a classmate.
It's the opposite. Parents are saying they're disturbed by the series because — as we grapple with raising children amid the murky world of social media, smartphones, and increasingly misogynistic content online — it might seem entirely, helplessly, all too possible.
The New Yorker recently described the show as "an expression of parental panic," and parents have indeed panicked online in a flurry of articles and opinion pieces. On TikTok, there are videos of "boy moms" weeping over the ending and urging other parents raising boys to watch the the show, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
And just as the show asks if the parents could have done more, many parents are now wondering if they're doing enough to protect their own kids in their digital universe.
"I did not know that danger was in plain sight but so cleverly hidden from me," contributor Jen McGuire wrote on the parenting news site Scary Mommy last week.
"While Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang is the subject of countless TikToks and articles, Adolescence made me realize there's so much beyond 'sigma' that I don't understand," notes an article on parenting site The EveryMom.
Adolescence, an immersive four-part miniseries filmed in England, explores the difficult questions that arise when a 13-year-old boy is accused of stabbing a girl in his school to death. It has been watched by more than 66 million people worldwide since it launched earlier in March.
And it touches a nerve because parents are not aware of how much exposure youth have to damaging and harmful content, said Shana MacDonald, the O'Donovan chair in communication at the University of Waterloo, who researches the rise of online hate, technology facilitated gender-based violence, and disinformation online.
For instance, a survey released in January of 1,500 Canadians by the White Ribbon Campaign found that 82 per cent of parents of boys who were polled were unaware of the manosphere, a corner of the internet where extremist groups often congregate and target young men.
Studies have pointed out the scale of the manosphere is likely underestimated by most adults even as more young people are exposed to online disinformation. As the Canadian Museum for Human Rights points out, the manosphere takes "everyday biases and magnifies them to misogynist extremes."
An IPSOS U.K. poll released last week found one in seven parents surveyed there weren't confident in what their children were seeing or hearing online.
"We are lacking media literacy as a culture on how to mediate and limit and talk to younger populations about the kinds of violence, exploitation, and hateful beliefs they are encountering," MacDonald told CBC News.
"It is so harmful especially seeing such violence at a young age when they are forming their identities."
WARNING: Spoilers from the show continue below.
'Adults are not in the know'
In Adolescence, 13-year-old Jamie (played by Owen Cooper), is arrested in his suburban home, accused of stabbing a female classmate. The show follows Jamie to the police station, calling on our parental sympathies and defences as the weeping, shocked boy is fingerprinted, strip searched, and questioned.
He appears child-like, wetting himself with shock, and crying for his parents, who staunchly defend him. In one heart-wrenching scene, a nurse needs to take a blood sample, but Jamie is terrified of needles. If one doesn't already know what's to come, it's easy to imagine there's no way this boy could be guilty of any crime.
Until the police present him and his father with the undisputable CCTV footage. And as Jamie's father Eddie (played by Stephen Graham) watches his child stab a teenage girl, his grief becomes our own.
This was done deliberately so that parents can understand that this type of misogyny lives among all of us, culture writer Amil Niazi recently told CBC's Commotion.
"You have to see him as someone that could be your child in order for you to understand the gravity of what's happening to these young men," Niazi told the podcast.
"They're trying to tell you: adults are not in the know."
In the show, it's the lead investigator's teenage son who finally explains the police have misinterpreted the emojis stabbing victim Katie had left on Jamie's Instagram posts earlier. The emojis aren't flirtatious — they're implying that Jamie is an incel, or "involuntary celibate."
In the U.K., British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday backed an initiative by Netflix to stream Adolescence for free to secondary schools across the country, so that as many teens as possible can watch it.
Starmer said showing the drama widely in schools will "help students better understand the impact of misogyny, dangers of online radicalization and the importance of healthy relationships," his office said.
"As a dad, I have not found it easy to watch this with children, because it connects with the fears and worries that you have as parents and adults," Starmer said.
Is the threat real?
In the next few episodes, we learn about the toxic masculinity and "incel" culture Jamie has likely been exposed to online, and how it's affected his thinking, and ultimately, his actions.
"Incel" describes a culture that is "violently antifeminist and misogynist," according to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.
Of course, Adolescence is a television series, written by adults, and it bears reminding not every child exposed to misogyny online is going to turn violent. The show has been criticized for scare-mongering, or implying that "boys are just one online click away from misogyny and violence," as USA Today points out.
Another article in the New Yorker argues the show is flawed for displaying the contemporary boy as "a fragile creature, abandoned by society." And as parenting expert and author Michelle Mitchell writes on her website, "the dear kids and teens who are most vulnerable to the 'manosphere' are kids who are not connected to loving, caring homes."
Still the threat of this happening in real life is very real, and a growing global concern, says MacDonald, who spoke to CBC News from an international conference on manosphere scholars.
"The manosphere is wildly popular and my biggest concern is how it is mainstreaming deeply harmful beliefs around gender and power and how to treat women and girls in society," she said.
Earlier this month, the UN wrote that the manosphere is bringing misogyny mainstream and driving a backlash against feminism.
Last December, the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), along with other Five Eyes intelligence and law enforcement agencies, put out a report warning about the rising prominence of young people who are attracted to violent ideologies.
According to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, self-identified incels have killed more than 50 people in Canada and the U.S. since 2014. In one case, the attacker was 17 years old when he killed a woman in a Toronto massage parlour by stabbing her some 40 times with a sword.
So, what can parents do?
The final episode of Adolescence focuses on Jamie's family and the ripple effects of his crime a year later. His parents grapple with their guilt, wondering what they could have done differently.
They did their best, they reassure each other, and they were good parents. But as the mother (played by Christine Tremarco) points out, "We made him."
"I think it would be good, if we accepted that maybe we should've done [more]. I think it'd be OK for us to think that," she says to her husband as they both cry.
That's the take-home message for parents, explains MacDonald.
"This needs to be talked about the same way you talk about drug use and drinking and driving," MacDonald said.
She urges parents of kids and teens to:
- Limit screen time and access.
- Have parental controls on devices and programs.
- Have access to their phones and group chats and passwords.
- Have frank and open conversations about family values around gender, how we treat people, as well as the legal risks of online harassment, bullying, and sharing hateful and sexually explicit or exploitative content.
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With files from the Associated Press and CBC Commotion