It’s been less than four weeks since the mini-series Adolescence premiered on Netflix. Ever since, it has not just sparked a heated debate among its audience, but brought misogyny, terms like manosphere and the dangers of digital spaces back into the national conversation. The series premiered on March 13 to critical acclaim and widespread reactions and has crossed over 100 million views.
But what made a regular dark psycho-drama depicting a teenager gone astray connect with global audiences? The chilling series charts the journey of a 13-year-old boy who becomes a suspect in the brutal murder of his classmate.
Jamie Miller’s exposure to misogynistic online communities may have contributed to him killing a female classmate. The series is as much a rude reality check for the parents as a portrayal of the challenges of modern parenting. Do you really know your child?
A world where even the well-behaved kids are being asphyxiated with information overload and all the access given by the digital world, assessing the true character of a child becomes impossible.
Last week, the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made a case for the series and said he wants to see it being shown in high schools to, “help students better understand the impact of misogyny, dangers of online radicalisation and the importance of healthy relationships.”
The gendered radicalisation is real
The relatability of the series is partially explained by the rise of the influencers promoting toxic masculinity. British-American influencer Andrew Tate, in specific.
Even after having been recently charged in Romania for crimes like rape, human trafficking and for forming an organised group to sexually exploit women, his cult following has neither been dented nor the conversation around his boycott nearly gained prominence. Tate, along with his brother Tristan Tate, is also currently under federal investigation in the United States.
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The 38-year-old former kickboxer boasts of a following of more than 10.8 million on X and wears his ideologies like a badge of pride. In several interviews, some with independent YouTubers, Tate has called himself, “absolutely a misogynist, a realist, a sexist,” and called the women lazy while rejecting concepts like “independent female.”
At other times, he has said that women belong in the home, can’t drive and should be ruled by men as their property.” Of the several online content creators dishing out gender toxicity and inequality, Andrew Tate has often been singled out for his reach and influence, especially among impressionable minds.
The culture of manosphere
We as a human race were not even completely done addressing the centuries-old ideas of patriarchy, male dominance and gender based violence when the term manosphere raises its head. A collective term for digital spaces, forums, influencers and content creators, manosphere refers to the ecosystem of platforms and people promoting misplaced ideas of gender roles, misogyny and extremely sexist views masked as male empowerment.
Virtual violence is peddled as a form of strength and impressionable minds have fallen prey. In March of 2024, a 26-year-old faced jail term for killing his ex-girlfriend with a knife including her family comprising her mother and sister. The chilling real life incidents where crime was a result of impaired judgement by online influences are neither far nor few between.
The universality of appeal
Not long ago, parents’ lack of understanding was only limited to the language or catch phrases used by the very young. The disagreements often remained restricted to nuanced terms of slang or two, rebellious pieces of clothing, or waking hours and bedtime routine. But never before in history have parents been left this incapacitated and overwhelmed at trying to control the entire world that young minds now have access to.
The show has been rated as the most-watched in as many as 80 countries. It not just depicts the dangers that the digital world throws us all into, the near impossibility of parenting in today’s times and absolute impossibility of limiting the access to the digital world.
Besides depicting the biggest challenge for all parents, the show leverages the popular plot themes of a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, the fear of rearing a child in today’s world and mental health concerns that are not nearly adequately addressed. Global audiences apart, back home producer Karan Johar has called the show, “a forever lesson and the mirror to parenting.” A few critics have highlighted the offscreen bond between Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper, who play father-son duo, as one of the reasons for the show’s success. However, the fact that it has stirred the right debate and hopefully, still in the nick of time, cannot be undermined.
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