After having admitted that Netflix’s culture shifting show ‘Adolescence’, “hit home hard” for him, prime minister Keir Starmer announced his decision to make the show freely available for UK secondary schools. It’s not often that a show, and a fictional one at that, makes such an impact that it’s mentioned in parliament, extensively covered in prime time television, and leads to meetings between politicians and producers. But the secret behind the show’s success doesn’t lie in breaking new ground—it’s in how brutally it confronts a very real and present danger. 

The series starts with a nail-biting police raid on the suspect Jamie Miller’s home. He appears to be no different from the average thirteen-year-old boy, tucked up asleep in his space-themed bedroom. The police’s all guns blazing response (literally) seems to be overkill in the idyllic Miller household. This feeling is only heightened when Jamie wets himself as he’s told that he’s being arrested on suspicion of murder. It’s later revealed that the victim is thirteen-year-old Katie Leonard, a girl who attended Jamie’s school. Throughout Jamie’s detainment, there are constant reminders of his youth— from the requirement to have an appropriate adult present at all times, to his fear of needles, the difficult conversations around his strip search, and questions about his schooling.  

That helplessness and lack of independence that comes with being underage sits in stark contrast to the heinous crime that Jamie stands accused of committing. It makes no sense, how could this seemingly harmless, clever kid with a bright future ahead of him kill his classmate in cold blood, for no apparent reason? As the drama unfolds, the leading detective desperately searches for a motive. He isn’t able to find one, however, until his teenage son spells it out for him, displaying the generational divide between GenZ and their parents which has allowed this epidemic to spread. His son explains that Jamie killed Katie because she labelled him an incel after rejecting his unwanted advances. In his own words, Jamie expected Katie to be “weak” after she had been picked on, thinking she would accept him in a moment of weakness. But her refusal infuriated him – he felt entitled to her, felt like he “could’ve touched her” but he didn’t, which in his eyes made him “better” than the other boys who wouldn’t have hesitated.  

The stark portrayal of the mindset that many young boys have been infiltrated with is sobering. But it’s not necessarily surprising. 

The recent and rapid growth in popularity of toxic male influencers coincides with the current recession and cost of living crisis. A poor economy leaves many young men and boys feeling lost; this despair and lack of direction that many of these boys face has been exploited by these so-called masculinity influencers. These harmful figures tell boys that society doesn’t care about them and that part of taking their power back is treating women as inferior. Jude Kelly, founder of the Women of the World Festival (WOW), told channel4 in an interview that “when the economy crashes people try to put women back in the kitchen.” According to Kelly, the logic behind this is the fear of male unemployment because males are brought up to feel that work gives them their purpose. 

In the past 50 years, women have become exponentially more successful in every occupational sphere, be it finance, law or politics. In fact, as of early 2025, female doctors outnumber male doctors for the first time in the UK. In America, a similar trend can be seen with 51% of eighteen to forty-year-old women choosing to stay single, reflecting the prioritization of higher education and career advancement. Academics like Jordan Peterson have also weighed in on the issue. He cites hypergamy – the psychological desire to marry one’s social, financial, and academic “superior”, traditionally associated with women – but claims that with women becoming so accomplished over the past several decades, they are increasingly choosing not to enter relationships. This shift has bred fear, panic, and ultimately resentment, fueling the rise of incel culture, which increasingly vilifies women. Many men who feel threatened by female progression have worked hard to use social media as a tool to curb it, desperately trying to bring back regressive ideas from the “good ol’ days.” 

Whilst this type of rhetoric is deeply problematic in itself, it becomes ten times worse when young boys, like Jamie, are able to freely access harmful content online. As pointed out by many experts, social media is an echo chamber. The algorithm sees what you like, what you interact with, and then continues to show you the same thing over and over again until you see no opposing or challenging views, until you start to believe that your world view must be objectively correct. Jack Thorne, producer of ‘Adolescence’, shared that he wouldn’t give his son a smartphone “until he’s 14”, arguing we should treat digital devices like cigarettes.  

To some, Thorne’s stance may sound excessive, but the truth is that ‘Adolescence’ isn’t a far cry from reality. In recent years, the murder of twelve-year-old Ava White, who was stabbed in Liverpool, and the murders of three little girls in Southport last year are the real world manifestations of the dangerous content that circulates freely online.  

‘Adolescence’ doesn’t offer easy answers, but it does force us to confront uncomfortable realities about how boys are shaped by the internet, and how girls pay the price. If we want to break the cycle, we need more than just conversations—we need digital literacy in classrooms, accountability from platforms, and the courage to challenge the content shaping us. It’s not just a tech problem, it’s a cultural one.