The gravity of “Adolescence”

On and on the rain will fall

Like tears from a star

Like tears from a star

On and on the rain will say

How fragile we are

How fragile we are

- Sting

Last Saturday, I received an unexpected flurry of texts from clients and friends:

“Have you seen Adolescence yet?”

“Tell me you’re watching Adolescence on Netflix right now.”

“Adolescence. Blown away. Must watch.”

Full disclosure, at the time I had no idea what anybody was talking about. Julie and I were not particularly in the mood to watch some depressing documentary about the nature of adolescence. Frankly, I find I deal with enough of that myself on a daily basis.

But if you’ve seen or heard about this sensation of a show, which many of you have by now, you know that it’s not a documentary. To our pleasant surprise, we discovered in the first few moments that this seemed to be a British police procedural, the investigation of the murder of a teenage girl. We weren’t exactly correct, but for some reason, we are drawn to just this kind of thing, so we decided to give it a watch.

It delivered way more than we expected.

The delicate artistry

First, I was blown away by the artistry, the beauty of this piece of work. There are four hour-long episodes, each one comprised of a single extended camera shot. Julie and I paused so many times to ponder the stunning camera work. How does one go from the interior of a classroom to a sky-high drone and back to the ground in one shot? How does the camera capture a foot chase step-by-step? How are the actors seamlessly delivering natural dialogue and storyline through, essentially, four hour-long one act plays with wildly diverging sets?

The work of the crew alone was jaw-dropping.

Then there was the acting itself. Actors playing police and parents, psychologists and teachers, ordinary people reacting to an extraordinary event in their small town. All of them are astonishing in that they seem so very real. We consider ourselves detectives for bad acting, and we couldn’t see the words on any page. This all felt like it was happening to these real people in real time.

Those were the adults.

And then there were these kids. So many kids. It would appear as if they were between 12- and 14-years-old or so. But somehow, a lot of them seemed so much younger, fragile children. And they were all amazing. The boy who plays the lead, Owen Cooper, displays some moments in the third episode reminiscent of Edward Norton’s starling star turn in “Primal Fear” a generation ago. I read that Adolescence was his first time on a TV set ever. I’m in awe.

The meaning

But mostly, the short series provides a backdrop for viewers to gain a true feel for the nature of adolescence today, early adolescence in particular. And the most disturbing elements of those teenage years are on full display here, the very real dynamics of what our kids are going through day after day, often well outside our lens of awareness. They’re bullied online in ways that need to be explained to adults. They are bullied old school, in person, as well. Their parents are truly, hauntingly unaware of what’s happening behind their closed bedroom doors.

But it’s the gender dynamics Adolescence shows us between young kids that are most unnerving. The idea of the disillusioned, disenfranchised young boy, already carrying ill will toward girls for their perceived lack of attraction to him. The idea that girls owe boys something, something sexual, or there is some significant price she may well pay.

The introduction to incel thinking, the idea that girls wield sexual power over boys, and the boys might remain intentionally celibate, is particularly disturbing. This notion arrives in their lives at alarmingly young ages, uncomfortably young. And according to my work with young boys and girls, this all rings very, very true. It’s the first realistic depiction of this dynamic I’ve ever seen. Childhood today is in fact truncated rather suddenly well before our kids are developmentally prepared.

Perhaps the most hauntingly realistic element of the show lies in the affect of the boys. They all seem so, so young, and so very fragile. These boys carry not only a lack of self-worth or self-esteem, but a deep sense of self-loathing. You can see that some of the boys internalize that feeling, constantly fearful and eyes down, ashamed of their very existence. But in a far more pointed way, they sometimes turn that hatred for themselves outward, most often toward girls and women. You can sense their ambivalence about the way they feel about the girls in their lives, wanting them so badly to want them, and loathing girls for rejecting them, whether overtly or implied.

This outsourcing of self-loathing lies at the core, not only of the series, but the lives of a lot of our boys. It drives how they feel about themselves and others, girls and women in particular. It drives the circumstances through which boys who feel marginalized or othered can so easily be radicalized, placing their energy into causes that, if they felt just a bit better about themselves, they would have nothing to do with.

Because in the end, these are children, boys. Big-hearted young boys. But they are sensitive as well, far more sensitive than most of us have any idea. And they are not raised to see their sensitivity and sense of empathy as strength. Quite the contrary, these qualities remained sissified, firmly held in the bastion of female characteristics in the minds of young boys.

So, as Adolescence puts on display so effectively and disturbingly, that internal self-loathing can morph into external rage, threats of violence, easily. As I sit here now, I’m trying to count the number of scenes in which a girl or a woman is the victim of violence, verbal abuse, or other physical threat at the hands of boys with no other tools available to manage their emotions. Whenever a girl or woman was on-screen, I found myself fearing for her safety.

And the difficult truth is, this is how I feel when I work with girls and young women. I often find myself lecturing them about protecting themselves from the boys in their lives, identifying red flags. Among the top priorities I hear from girls when considering dating or even friendship with a boy is safety.

The reality

The realism in the show lies in part from its origin story. Stephen Graham, the creator who also plays the father of Jamie, the teenage boy who brutally kills classmate Katie, noted a number of actual recent stabbings of young teenage girls at the hands of boys their age. He was curious about the circumstances that led to these disturbingly violent acts. Adolescence reflects his thoughts on the factors that might play a role.

As a result, Adolescence is a jarringly realistic glimpse into the lives of young teenagers today. Over the course of the past 10 days, I have been asked several times by parents whether elements of Adolescence are exaggerated on the show. And they are not. Not unlike Euphoria before it, Adolescence provides a rare, realistic glimpse into the lives and minds of young kids today. The on-screen circumstances are extraordinary, I suppose, in the name of plot and retaining an audience. But the vibe and the feel of the teenage experience is very real and rings remarkably true.

It is crucial that we understand this reality. I frequently cite a young man who said the following to me:

“Listen, Duffy, you have to understand. You were never a teenager, never like this.”

He was pointing out the myriad stressors kids face today that we never encountered: out-sized social, emotional and academic pressure; online bullying; readily-available pornography; podcasts and video game offerings laced with invitations to incel groups. I had no argument. He was right. We need to learn from kids what it’s like to be kids. This is new.

The mandate

So to start, I strongly encourage you to watch Adolescence if you haven’t already. If you’ve got younger teenagers, middle schoolers, you may really want to avoid it. It’s going to make you feel unnerved and uncomfortable. But I always find that the more a parent knows about the life of his or her child, about the culture of their school, their peer group, and their lives, the more equipped he or she is to help guide them through the morass of it all.

One uncomfortable truth you’ll discover is that, in so many ways, our kids have our number. They have a bead on how a 12-, 13- or 14-year-old might have acted a generation ago, and they are adept at capitalizing on that. The youth and the innocence, the naïveté and the unknowing. Like Jamie in the series, our kids are able to put that face on readily, to fool us into thinking they know less than they do, they are someone they are not. I’ve seen this play out in my office countless times and, in the end, it works a lot of the time. The adults, parents in particular, are fooled. It works in Adolescence as well. In the initial scene, Jamie seems an innocent boy, incapable of the horrible act he’s accused of.

But this ability to seem young and defenseless actually leaves our kids very much alone, without the badly-needed emotional and practical resources we can provide them if we’re willing to manage our own discomfort. Instead, far too many of us believe the ruse, or choose to believe it. “Not my baby” is a dangerous way of thinking these days. When we watch shows like Adolescence, we don’t think our child, who presents the way the kids do early on this series, could possibly be involved in any of this ugliness. But they often are, at least to an extent. It’s easy today for a child to be involved in online bullying, incel talk, pornography, and sexual politics. It’s on his phone. It’s on his person all the time.

We cannot be so naïve as to expect that our kids are not deep into that culture. As parents and caregivers, it is dangerous for us to believe so. Ignorance, whether deliberate or unintended, leaves us out of the loop, unequipped or ill-equipped to be helpful in guiding our kids through all the traumas and nuances of this period of their lives.

So please, watch Adolescence. Watch it especially if you are the parent of a current or rising teenager. Watch it if you have a boy, so you can participate in the narrative he’s constructing. But also, watch if you have girls. It will provide you with a primer for adolescence today, the dark side of your kids’ lives. You need to know, whether you’re interested or not. It’s the only way that we can help guide our kids through the treacherous terrain of these rocky adolescent years.

In the show, Jamie is a lost boy carrying a complicated set of emotions about himself, the space he occupies in the world, his place with girls. Without tools to understand and manage his emotions, he lashes out. He takes Katie’s life, and effectively his own. His parents are left questioning what they might have done differently, what signs they may have missed. And I can’t help but think that a moment or two of connection, being heard, an assist in self-discovery, may have prevented the tragedy that befalls those families and that community.

If we are there to listen to the Jamie’s of the world, we may well save them. And the Katie’s as well. Our kids need emotionally available adults in their lives, and they need us now. Those moments are our mandate.