Parenting in the time of social media: Lessons from 'Adolescence'

The series Adolescence should make middle-class parents reflect on gendered attitudes, especially those relying on digital shortcuts over real parenting

Globalisation as an economic trend may be receding from view but Netflix, a product of the globalised digital age, has unwittingly sparked a global conversation for parents with its powerful crime drama series Adolescence. With 24.3 million views in its first three days, Adolescence  topped the streaming service’s global charts and was the most watched series in 71 countries — including India.

 

Series co-creator and actor Stephen Graham is bemused by this worldwide success. In an interview with Rolling Stones magazine, he said, “I got a text from a mate of mine, telling me how big Adolescence is in India. And my first response was, ‘Hold on, did you say India?! Did I hear you correctly?’ Apparently, it’s really striking a nerve there.”

 

Wherever you live and whether you are a parent or not, Adolescence  will strike a nerve. If you have children, especially a son, approaching young adulthood, Adolescence can be disturbing and revelatory.

 

With its spare production values, the four-episode British-made series is an unlikely hit. There are no “action scenes”, lush settings, big music or whodunit dramatics. Since it is set in Liverpool, you may need the subtitles to follow the thick Scouser accent or frantically search Google for the meaning of “Nonse”. Yet Adolescence scored a rare 99 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes’ “Tomatometre,” meaning it’s the “almost perfect” production.  

 

The storyline is basic; Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy, is arrested for the murder of a classmate. The first episode takes you through the arrest and somehow manages to hold your attention through the prosaic arraignment procedures. Small details stay with you. Jamie is so terrified he wets himself when the police arrive. He’s scared of needles and winces when blood is drawn for a test. By Episode 2, you know the identity of the killer. The real story is why he did it. That’s offered in the most compelling of the episodes, the third, when Jamie sits down for an interview with a child psychiatrist.

 

Episode 3 reveals how Jamie responds to chronic bullying on social media, including by the girl he murdered. He was called ugly and an incel. In India, the cruel Delhi college slang for such people was FOSLAs or members of the Frustrated One-Sided Lovers’ Association. In the pre-digital days, such insults were considered harmless, even amusing, perhaps because they were limited to a relatively small universe. With social media, labels like this can go viral, subjecting the victim to universal humiliation.

 

In Jamie’s case, the shame was compounded by the fact that he could not conform to societal templates of masculinity. His father, a dirt-under-the-fingernails “manly” bloke, a plumber by profession (powerfully portrayed by Graham), is troubled by his son’s preference for art to sports. In separate episodes, Jamie and he recount the hopeless attempts to make the boy take to football and boxing. As Jamie talks, you get to watch the child tragically struggling to cope with an

 

inferiority complex and the sexual awakening of the emerging adult. As vividly played by 15-year-old Owen Cooper, Jamie veers between a bewildered, frustrated kid desperate to be liked and the shrewd adult sussing out the psychiatrist’s line of questioning.

 

In episode 4, the parents introspect. Where had they gone wrong? The father figures it out but husband and wife are reluctant to fully acknowledge their parental shortcomings. As he and his wife are rallied by their sensibly normal teenage daughter, a child of the social media age herself and now being mercilessly trolled for her brother’s crime, he wonders: “How did we make her?” The same way we made Jamie, his wife answers laconically, suggesting that there is no silver bullet to parenting in the digital age. 

 

In Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who watched the series with his teenage children, has suggested that Adolescence  be shown in schools to spark “critical” conversations. Indian schools are unlikely to permit such forward thinking. At the very least, the series should provoke introspection by middle class parents about gendered attitudes, especially among those who increasingly resort to digital tools as substitutes for the real, tough business of parenting.