Do you know what your child is doing on the internet? This question is both asked and answered by Adolescence, a devastating four-part series on Netflix. The answer, it strongly suggests, is “no”. And even if you did know, if you could peek over their shoulder and read their messages, you probably wouldn’t understand what you’re looking at.
The series sees 13-year-old Jamie (Owen Cooper), a bright boy from a loving family, arrested for the murder of a classmate, Katie, after being radicalised by incel and misogynistic culture online.
In the show, terms such as “red pill” (explained by Adam, a classmate of Jamie’s, in the series as meaning “‘I see the truth’ ... a call to action by the manosphere”) are dismissed as “that Andrew Tate sh**e.” Police catastrophically misinterpret the emojis used by Jamie and his friends. As Adam (Amari Bacchus) explains: a dynamite emoji means someone is an incel. Hearts denote different things depending on their colour: “Red means love, purple – horny, yellow – ‘I’m interested, are you interested’, pink – ‘I’m interested but not in sex’, orange – ‘You’re going to be fine’. It all has a meaning.”
[ Adolescence: Five truths about our teenage boys we need to address urgentlyOpens in new window ]
To those not in the know, it sounds cartoonish, comical even. The language of the internet is complex and multilayered; the language of teenagers even more so. But Adolescence is a wake-up call about the fringe ideologies our teenagers are being exposed to, how radical language can be hidden in plain sight, and how, if you know how, you can hide your tracks. And how parents can’t afford to stay oblivious.
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Welcome to the reality of the internet. It has the personality of a stereotypical teenage boy: it likes violent video games, naked women and trolling. Online, you are never more than two clicks, or one key word, away from porn.
The internet offers an intoxicatingly curated experience. An attention economy that gives you exactly what you want, a personal algorithm perfectly designed to seduce you – and that is equal parts alluring and dangerous. The algorithm knows nothing is harder to resist than escalation.
Imagine you’re a teenage boy. Maybe you feel like you don’t fit in, that girls don’t like you, maybe you’re worried about finding your place in the world. These are typical teenage worries. A few innocent searches and you’re in the manosphere, which is designed to make you angry. An angry audience is an engaged audience, one that will buy your merch and generate ad revenue. Manosphere influencers like Tate are telling boys that what they feel is justified, offering them a worldview that explains everything.
In a world where ‘unalive’ is used to skirt the algorithmically unfriendly ‘kill’, people know how to get views, regardless of content
All of this is happening against the backdrop of a male loneliness epidemic, a crisis of masculinity. Everywhere in the developed world, Gen Z men are trending more conservative. These are the products of boys growing up on an internet that caters to their precise wants, that does not challenge them to think critically about information. An internet that tells them instant gratification is their right, that the urges they cannot air in public have a home online. One wrong click, one mildly curious click even, and you’re down the rabbit hole. Soon it all starts to look normal.
[ Adolescence: Why can’t we look away from Netflix’s hypnotic hit?Opens in new window ]
Adolescence offers a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of young men’s online lives. There are incel (involuntary celibate) forums and MGTOW (men going their own way) philosophers. There are whole communities arranged around a hatred of women, held together by a radical lexicon: femoids, Chads, Stacys, alphas, betas.
These strange quarters and those who inhabit them have mostly been objects of ridicule. But the ridicule did not make them go away. They simply became quieter, more strategic, using dog whistles to both evade notice and become more socially acceptable. No longer confined to fringe forums, these ideologies have begun to seep in everywhere. They are blasted over X by Elon Musk or in a comic book posted on Instagram or sandwiched on your TikTok feed between funny cat and fitness videos. In a world where “unalive” is used to skirt the algorithmically unfriendly “kill”, people know how to get views, regardless of content.
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It is easy to be seduced by the potential of the internet. To believe, like Jamie’s parents, that a child is safer online than out in the streets. Many adults still cling on to the internet’s early promise: the entire world in the palm of your hand! It fosters connection, makes people more empathetic! And don’t forget the dog memes. But the nefarious side of the internet is not an accident; it’s a design feature worth billions. That is the trick: plausible deniability. Baked into its fabric is something rotten, dressed up with bright colours and instant dopamine. And it targets children.
There is a stark generational divide in how we understand the internet: it is perhaps the first technology that is being handed up, as opposed to handed down. Older generations are playing a game of catch-up, but it’s better than refusing to play at all.
In one of Adolescence’s most harrowing scenes, Jamie’s father asks his mother if they could have done more, and they recognise the harsh truth: they let their son loose in a world they did not understand. They did not understand the risks, could not recognise the signs, and did not even know the questions they should have been asking.
It is no accident that the series is called Adolescence: this is what it means to grow up now. Not an aberration, not a glitch in the matrix, but a cold hard reality.
Catherine Prasifka is a novelist and Maynooth University and Kildare Library and Arts Service Writer-in-Residence
