'Adolescence' and Parenting in a Digital Storm
More than a dozen police officers, wrapped in body armor and with a battering ram, roll up to a modest house on a quiet early-morning street in northern England. They storm the door, surprising the family inside, and the officers efficiently apprehend a murder suspect. This small army of police has collared not a serial abuser or a drug kingpin, but a 13 year-old boy sleeping in kiddie pajamas and cradling his teddy bear.
So begins Adolescence, a four-part Netflix series which debuted last month. It’s a difficult watch, but one which I would recommend to those of us looking after boys in our increasingly digital world.
In addition to its stunning technical virtuosity—each of its roughly hour-long episodes is shot in one continuous take—Adolescence speaks to the unending challenges of both being and raising a boy in an age of online bullying, manosphere temptations, and screen-saturated culture. Adolescence is a deeper exploration of the social and technological forces that can rob young people of their innocence right under our noses. This, for me, is the most wrenching aspect of the tale: The individual authority figures in the story—from the parents of the accused to the detective inspector on the case to the psychologist assessing the boy--are all generally thoughtful, earnest, and intent on doing good in the world. But what Adolescence reveals is a landscape where both these authority figures and the institutions they represent are badly outmatched by the content, pace, and potential cruelty of an online world that has its own language, vanishingly few boundaries, and where an economy of power can victimize any participant in an instant.
In the wake of this asymmetry, the adults struggle to pick up the pieces: Parents are left to wonder why their love wasn’t enough to protect their son from a screen in his own bedroom (they have a slightly older daughter who doesn't seem to have a similar relationship with the Internet). A child psychologist is undone by a prepubescent boy whose internalized self-hatred leads him to whipsaw between wide-eyed shame and snarling rage. A detective surveys the social chaos and enervated teaching of a local school and ruefully remarks to his partner, “Does it look like anyone’s learning anything in there to you?” The sense of helplessness among all the purported helpers is difficult to watch.
“The message of ‘Adolescence’ is not that our boys are unlikely to become autonomous, caring, responsible young men; rather, it simply asks that we adults be clear-eyed about the obstacles that our increasingly digitized world can create on that journey. ”
The series offers no obvious villains or facile solutions. It’s intimated that all adults may spend too much time at their respective workplaces, but they aren’t neglectful of their loved ones. Teachers urge students to “Put that phone away!”, but it’s clear that phones are but one element of a culture that cannot find freedom from screen life. Law enforcement is direct and clinical, but also seeks to soften edges when working with kids. Yet none of it seems enough to forestall tragedy—the tragedy of the specific crime, yes, but also the tragedy of the world that these teens inhabit.
But while the show presents a cautionary tale, it cannot plunge us into despair. Given the ubiquity of online life and the difficulty of monitoring their boys’ consumption, many parents may feel afraid or ineffectual in confronting the challenge. Yet better ways are available; indeed, while answers are not easy, the moments of hope in Adolescence are clear: They come in periods of deep listening, of authentic connection, of adults seeing kids’ abilities and needs; indeed, as a police officer notes, “All kids really need is one thing that makes them feel okay about themselves.” There is truth in this insight which is brought home midway through the second episode, when the detective inspector in charge—a strong, handsome, authoritative figure—encounters his own son while investigating the accused boy’s school. The son, who is lanky and unpopular and school avoidant, eventually pulls his dad aside to clue him in on the symbology and subterranean bullying of Instagram. While the insight helps the inspector make an arrest, the true payoff is his new recognition of his son—a boy who doesn’t have his dad’s confidence or physique, but nonetheless has something to offer, if others could only see it. The day concludes with one of the only instances of ease in the entire series, as the pair drive off to get a father-son snack together.
Early in the series, the father of the accused boy is called upon to act as the “appropriate adult” while his son is processed for the alleged crime. The father is uncertain about the specific job (i.e. What does it mean to be an “appropriate adult” in a police station?), but his uncertainty extends to all of us as viewers: What does it mean to be an “appropriate adult” in this day and age? The implied answer of Adolescence holds that those of us gifted with the opportunity to care for boys do best for our loved ones when we are deeply aware of both their in-person and online worlds; when we extend them genuine curiosity about their experiences; when we are gently but insistently present for them; and when we recognize that their need for connection is just that—a need, and one which may require more persistence, more availability, and more vigilance on our behalf than previous generations of caregivers may have had to marshal. The message of Adolescence is not that our boys are unlikely to become autonomous, caring, responsible young men; rather, it simply asks that we adults be clear-eyed about the obstacles that our increasingly digitized world can create on that journey.