Adolescence: we are taking all the wrong lessons from the Netflix show

The sun is starting to rise and we are all queued up to use it. Person after person approaches and draws water from the depths - but something is wrong.

There is a foul smell and an ominous bubbling sound. When it is my turn, I pause before pulling the rope to fetch the bucket and cautiously peer over the edge, recoiling in horror.

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Deep down at the bottom lurks an indescribable evil, festering and angry, it poisons everything it touches. And everyone who has been drinking the well is poisoned too.

This dream returned to me when I, like the rest of the country, binged my way through Netflix’s Adolescence. Because like that well, our culture has been poisoned and the show is confronting us with that fact.

What is Adolescence?

The Netflix show undoubtedly needs no introduction and yet I still think it is worth doing it anyway. The four-part show is about a bright ‘normal’ 13-year-old boy who brutally murders one of his female classmates.

It is perhaps so shocking because he doesn’t seem the ‘type’ to have committed such a crime. Yet that is what makes the show so effective - it is reminding us that anyone can be radicalised.

And there is a widespread and dangerous ideology taking root in boys and men, young and old, right now.

This is not Mr. Bates vs the Post Office II

If you had been in a coma for the last year and just woken up, you would probably be having quite the sense of deju-vu right now. A surprise TV blockbuster has once again driven the national conversation and shocked us all into action.

Except last year with Mr. Bates vs the Post Office the solution was a shamefully cut-and-dry one: overturn the wrongful convictions of the postmasters. But it is not quite so simple when it comes to Adolescence.

There is no way to click your fingers and make the problem go away, the ‘manosphere’ and its insidious influence can’t be wished away - as much as we would want it to.

Misogyny is a problem that runs deep and wide, its rotten roots have burrowed very deep into the soil of this country (and the world, truth-be-told). It was only 50 years ago that women gained the right to open their own bank accounts - and less than a hundred years since universal women’s suffrage was approved.

This nation of ours - this Albion - was a patriarchy for so long that it still permeates, even subconsciously. You’ve probably heard men make ball-and-chain jokes about their girlfriends or wives - you may have even been the one making them.

Villains like Andrew Tate did not emerge from a vacuum, it is an evil that has always been there. They are not the disease, they are but a symptom.

We can’t see the forest for the smartphones

Thousands of years after Zeno of Citium sat down to teach his followers in Ancient Athens, his philosophy of stoicism has made a comeback. Across social media people are extolling the virtues of the writings of Marcus Aurelius - not least of all Andrew Tate.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise because our culture has become hooked on the idea of self-help. Social media, the internet, TV, the idea of ‘hacks’ and self-improvement are everywhere you look - have you been to a book store recently?

Even the manosphere is a perverse twist on this: the ‘fix’ to get women, money and fame. And the conversation around Adolescence feels, at least to me, like it has fallen into the trap of looking for quick fixes.

In a piece on The Guardian, the co-writer of the Netflix show joined calls from the Smartphone Free Childhood for smart phones to be banned for teens. He said: “If it was my decision, I would be talking of smartphones like cigarettes and issuing an outright ban on all use by under-16s.”

But if we look at the text of Adolescence itself, would that have made a difference? In the fourth and final episode, Jamie’s mother mentions how he was always in his room on the computer - suggesting that is where he was radicalised.

During the harrowing third episode, he confesses to Erin Doherty’s psychologist about how he asked Katie out (and was rejected by her) after indecent images of her were passed around the school - seeing her as ‘get-able’ because she was vulnerable now. And yes he does go to confront her over her posts calling him an incel on Instagram, but even if they didn’t have phones, there is a web version of the platform.

Jamie doesn’t kill Katie because of smartphones, he killed her because he was radicalised by an internet that has become a festering pit of toxicity (not just misogyny). And there is no easy solution.

Banning smartphones for teens feels like a society that is howling into the wind. Doing something for the sake of doing something.

But it is not tackling the issue that is at the heart of Adolescence. And unfortunately it is not something that can be solved in a couple of easy steps like the wrongful convictions of the Postmasters.

I don’t have kids, let alone teenagers, so I don’t know whether phones should be banned from school - or banned for them altogether. But equally has there even been any research about if this would even work?

The videos from the ‘manosphere’ will still be there waiting to be discovered. Instead of one quick-fix this is a problem that needs to be deeply reckoned with.

We need to build a better version of the internet and it will not be easy. So much of the current web is fuelled by ‘engagement’, which like an ouroboros is self-perpetuating: anger begets anger begets anger.

Adolescence is a warning - but it doesn’t feel like we are heeding it.

Have you watched the Netflix show yet? Let me know your thoughts on Adolescence by email: [email protected].