‘Adolescence’ – What the new Netflix drama gets right about boys, and what it gets badly wrong

Thomas Casemore• March 24, 2025

In the last week, the internet has been ablaze with comments about Netflix’s new mini-series titled Adolescence.

The immaculately produced show follows the story of a 13-year-old boy, Jamie, who is accused – and guilty – of murdering a young girl from his school.

The motive? Jamie’s acceptance of “toxic masculinity” – specifically, the manosphere of online misogynistic content.

I have written before on this topic and there is no doubt that such content exists in vast quantities across both the darker and more mainstream areas of the internet. And it is certainly true that the ideas picked up by the show are ones that parents and teachers are wrestling with daily.

The show has been so influential that the UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has called for the programme to be shown in schools to raise awareness of the issues.

The hyper-masculine Andrew Tate, a man currently accused of sex trafficking, has been the primary focus of concern by various bodies, as a homing beacon of the movement.

Manospheric content is far more ubiquitous, and can be far more extreme than even Tate’s, and given the unlimited access many children have to the internet, it is not difficult for both boys and girls to find.

Those who rely upon a relatively small knowledge of Tate to address “toxic masculinity” often show themselves to be misinformed about the topic, because they fail to address what Tate gets right in his social analysis – and how these glimmers of truth make the lies even more dangerous.

In the show, Jamie commits the murder because he is being bullied by his victim, Katie, who is commenting on Instagram posts, calling him an “incel” (involuntary celibate).

Whilst it may seem odd, as the show points out, to consider the “celibacy” of a 13-year-old boy, such sexualised content is found throughout schools of all types across the country.

The show does, through this cyberbullying, hint that life might be hard for young boys in UK schools. The statistics around the falling academic standard of white working-class boys in particular have been well known in educational circles for over two decades. However, this does not seem to draw the help or sympathy it should.

Whilst violence and murder rates linked to manospheric content remain relatively low compared to other criminal motivations, they are growing – and will only get worse so long as the key questions are not asked. These are questions the show begins to raise but does not answer fully.

Firstly, boys are drawn to Tate and the manosphere because they get one thing right: boys and young men today do feel that they are trapped, pushed down and neglected.

As boys watch their female peers do increasingly well academically, and be pushed into STEM and hired first through DEI programmes, this can be perceived as unfair and difficult to process.

Working-class boys in particular, who already have low prospects, watch as those prospects shrink even further. Initiatives designed to benefit the marginalised end up being actively pernicious to this already disadvantaged group.

What seems to be the response? Talk therapy. Coax boys into accepting life as it is now. Lines of often female counsellors tell them that they are understood and that they just need to be more open and vulnerable.

Telling young boys to try to understand what it means to be a man is a crucial point of failure on the part of the education and social system.

Mass fatherlessness means that boys have little hope of maturing properly. As the show exhibits, a collapsing British education system means that positive role models in the form of male teachers are also increasingly rare.

Through PSHE lessons, boys are taught at increasingly young ages to explore their sexuality and consume pornography “sensibly” – something which drives them further into the darkest parts of sexual violence, addiction and degrading misogyny.

The system seems to have identified the problem but is incapable of reaching the required solutions because of perverse incentives and misplaced values.

Boys need ambition – something to fight for – empowerment to do good, drive, motive and a chance for heroism.

However, society seems to have decided that, when done by men, these virtues are “toxic”.

Boys are left with two choices: reject their masculinity or fall into an all-out embrace of real toxicity.

The programme does, however – whether intentionally or not – point to one avenue of action.

At the end of the final episode, we see Jamie’s parents struggling to work out whether they played a part in creating the monster their son had become. In this discussion, they talk about how Jamie would lock himself in his room for hours on his computer, well into the small hours, becoming increasingly isolated from the real world.

The implication is that perhaps the internet is to blame for all these problems, and in that regard, the programme is partly correct.

But the act of allowing your child unrestrained access to the internet should, in itself, be considered an act of parental neglect.

The technology we have access to is harmful for adults – let alone children – and yet many parents have entirely taken their hands off the reins. Vast numbers of children are being raised by their computers, their unruly peers and their schools.

It is little wonder that monsters are being created in the glare of a smartphone screen, and that behaviour standards in schools are plummeting – in part evidenced by the mass exodus of teachers from the profession and the increasing number of parents opting for home-schooling.

According to Catholic doctrine, a parent has the primary responsibility for the education of their child, but many are simply handing them over to the world to be raised – and then wondering why they come back damaged.

Nevertheless, technology is actually the secondary issue. Smartphones and social media must be banned for children – at least under 16, probably 18 – particularly given the quiet acceptance of child-on-child sexual abuse through sexting and similar behaviour.

However, what drives these boys to their computers and the manosphere?

It is a society that has forgotten what masculinity is – that shuts down the opportunities for boys to truly become good men, all under the guise of equality and concerns about “toxicity”.

The positive differences between boys and girls are being erased as boys are encouraged to become more effeminate and placid.

But they are not stupid. They can tell that something is wrong with the claim that to be a man is to be a force of evil and oppression. And they can also see the clear differences between men and women.

The problem of “toxic masculinity” will not go away until there is widespread acceptance of true masculinity. Unfortunately, that masculinity – the type promoted by Catholicism – is at odds with our society, and therefore the problems will not be fixed.

Boys will not be taught that there is virtue in leading one’s family, in taking up the fight for a just cause, or in the ambition to become the great men of history they are no longer taught about.

Instead, they must become androgynous, hypersexualised, confused people – void of the characteristics and virtues that call them to Christ-like masculinity.

In the meantime, schools will continue to quash the masculine spirit of boys, and parents will continue in their sedentary pursuit of calm through handing their boys over to the evils of the internet.

We can only hope, pray and act so that the Church steps into the breach, and boldly proclaims the untold joys, struggles and positives of true masculinity – a masculinity that boys can only find in relationship with their Creator.

(Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)