What to learn from Netflix Adolescence: Why it’s critical that we do…
If you have felt humiliated at any point in your life, you understand how painful and long lasting that experience can be. Adolescence, the explosive, short, Netflix series, has smashed the glass, and thrown the doors off of a subject, that has been quietly growing in intensity for years. Not like an atomic bomb, more like a slow but progressive trickle of toxicity seeping into the hearts and minds of our children and their parents. That is the world of un-policed, socially acceptable social media through unreserved access to a device that our children are simply too young to have and manage responsibly.
The adolescence plot: We hear that a young 13 year old boy has murdered a young girl. The series then unfolds as we learn about who Jamie is, what environment he was immersed in and the motive behind the murder. However, as we learn of the motive, it sucks every parent into the truth about what our young people are exposed to and having to handle every single day. The single camera follows police around Jamie’s school post event, a school of children with no respect for teaching staff, who are overrun, overwhelmed, the kids have no respect for their authority, it’s just chaos.
Someone at the school has been murdered and everyone knows who has done it. As the camera pans around the school the desperate police inspectors are hunting for more information, classrooms are repeating in unison, outdated and unhelpful content to memorise, from an archaic syllabus that is outdated, useless and isn’t teaching children anything about life….did you miss those lessons that we were supposed to have about life? I certainly did, the lessons about healthy relationships, how to have healthy sex, not just contraception, how to handle your money, make money, run a business, be kind to siblings…no, there were just exams, the best kids were the smartest kids, there was no other assessment criteria.
This is not just a failing of school but a huge failing of our society at a time when we need guidelines and awareness for young people more than ever.
The impact of what Jamie did as a consequence of his confusion, lack of guidance, emptiness, anger, pain, huge social and psychological pressure, is a story of every young boy ‘back then’ and today. His father was beaten and he promised himself never to hit his children, but instead those wounds and scars seeped into his son, his son (Jamie) knew how disappointed his Dad was in him “he couldn’t even look at me” Jamie explains to the psychologist.
The unrelenting social pressure all boys feel to be ‘liked’, to be cool, to be attractive to the opposite sex. Exactly the chaos I (Ben) was trapped in and boy was I desperate for that attention, I would stop at nothing to get it and that took me 15 years of therapy and guidance to understand and undo after leaving a trail of relationship destruction and foolish choices in my wake.
Kids are trampled on by an absurd but popular stats e.g. the 80/20 rule, that suggests 80% of women want only 20% of the men and if you aren’t in the top 20% then you are worthless, valueless, excluded and ashamed. You MUST be a high value man, otherwise what are you? What is the evaluation if you are or not? What your peers say about you, peers who don’t even know you and who are equally as confused and embarrassed as you are, but that social vote feels like gold, or like precious metals in Greenland, that may shortly be “taken by force”.
The crux of it all - murder: Its common knowledge, 40%-70% of people that have committed murder had excruciatingly painful life experiences at the hands of the people that were supposed to love them the most. Hurt people, hurt people and no not all hurt people, hurt people, but seeds grow and with some stimulus, the hurt person, doesn’t need a huge motivation to inflict that pain on someone else. In an attempt to communicate, this is how I feel and if I make you feel this way, maybe the pain I feel might stop. This dynamic is not just limited to children, I see it in adult relationships everywhere. Jamie is humiliated over and over, on his way to taking life, more pressure concentrated on an already very fragile boy.
Jamie’s example suggests that we need even less abuse now, even with a relatively ‘normal’ home and with even a light dusting of neglect and disappointment expressed toward him, a seed was already planted and his social environment in life and online went ahead and fanned the flame into a rage that was uncontainable.
What is the relationship then between humiliation and violence? Linda Hartling, a researcher in the relationship between humiliation and violence, suggests that humiliation can trigger a series of reactions, including social pain, decreased self-awareness, increased self-defeating behaviour, and decreased self-regulation, that ultimately can lead to violence. Hartling and colleagues state that “humiliation is not only the most under-appreciated force in international relations, it may be the missing link in the search for root causes of political instability and violent conflict…perhaps the most toxic social dynamic of our age.”
Dehumanising and humiliating others are becoming increasingly normalised, along with violence. Now, rather than humiliating someone in front of a small group of people, we have the power to eviscerate someone in front of a global audience of strangers, or the whole school. The images don’t go away, you just have to scroll down through your feed, it’s there in plain sight. If something embarrassing happened at school people might remember it for a few months and only certain ‘brave’ people attack you with it, but now everyone can anonymously attack you from behind their insta account…its relentless.
Some time ago if you were an author, people would give you some social respect, its called social proof, if something was said on television in the 80/90s/00’s - the words would be accepted as true or fact, now if you have a smidgen of social credibility and you say something on social media, young people especially, without any filters, can just accept that bullsh%t as fact. They then act accordingly to the facts that they believe, e.g. you’re ugly, you aren’t strong, you are outside of the top 20%, you’re nothing, not even worth the air you breathe. This content of thoughts are the very words and narrative that can lead to suicide, abuse and extreme violence, in some cases, murder.
5 years ago we took our eldest out of school, we no longer believed that traditional schooling was going to be an environment in which she could ever thrive, focus on all of the wrong things, focus on performance, focus on social status, focus on beauty and physical appearance. We had the privilege of watching Adolescence knowing that we have only just given our 12 year old a mobile phone, with WhatsApp with her friends and Internet access that we monitor and she uses for just 1 hour per day, her phone is left downstairs at night and there is huge trust in that relationship, we trust her to use it well because we have taught her. She has her own laptop which is never used in her room on her own. Yet we understand that she will and already does have to interface with ‘whats out there’, understand it and understand how to deal with it when it does come.
What must we do as parents? There is a huge amount of work here to turn things around, but what choice do we have? - its a big job raising each one of your children, that’s what we took on when we decided to have them, this is on us, not them, we did it, we have done it, they couldn’t get a phone without us giving it to them, we ‘welcomed in’ all of what they are having to carry:
1 - YOU: Take a really long hard look at yourself, you are responsible for your own happiness (or misery), not them and you are responsible for providing an environment for your children to grow. It’s imperative that you take care of building a healthy one. How often are you on your phone? Be honest. How often are you investing time in them? Do you have family meetings? Are you confused? Are you addicted to your phone, to blaming your partner for how things have turned out? Do you honestly not know what to do about this situation? Not only is it not uncommon, it is normal.
2 - Leadership: The home needs love, clarity and order - regular occurrences to bring the family together, to teach them of a healthy way of living, you can’t just leave it to chance and hope they’ll figure it out by watching you, because they wont….and how often are you on your phone in shared spaces? How often are you just shouting out and calling out your anger and judgements and fear into that space? How often are you really listening to them?
3 - THEM: Intervene - Love them, involve yourself in their world, your children wont like you looking at their messages (everyday), watching them as they play their computer games, showing an interest in their games, enforcing time away from phone with consequences if necessary. Build that relationship, don’t just police it, you are seeking to connect with them through their interests, not yours. Take your time and schedule it if you have to.
4 - Spend time with them away from their online world, 1:2:1 or as a family. You have 16 years really where your children are on loan to you, they are not yours but you have been entrusted with the most important job in the world for 16 years and that time will set the course for the rest of their lives.
So in Summary then:
Adolescence has impacted many viewers already. How we, our society together are responsible for cultivating monsters and we are all responsible for that. How are we responsible for that, what you do matters and just as importantly what you don’t do matters, what you ignore, what you neglect, what behaviour you can’t be bothered to help them unlearn or be organised enough to hold them accountable to making improvements.
You must take care of you first, don’t just tell them what to do, you be the change you want to see in them and talk about things, openly, build trust, let them know you have screwed up by ignoring these issues and tell them thats not what good parenting is, good parenting looks like implementing all of the above, you don’t have to be superhuman to be a really good parent, you just have to focus on the right things and follow through, over and over and over.
If you are having any difficulties there is lots of help out there:
Mens groups: https://www.malejourney.org.uk
Samaritans: https://www.samaritans.org
Christians against poverty: https://capuk.org
Damn good listeners: We offer free coaching to people who apply: https://www.damngoodlistener.com/contact
Image courtesy of: https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81756069
