The truth behind Adolescence, Netflix's new crime drama

At first glance, Adolescence, Netflix’s new crime mini-series, looks like your standard whodunnit. A teenage girl is murdered. A teenage boy is arrested. We follow the fallout.

But to reduce this show to a thriller about finding a killer is to miss its sharpest, most haunting truth.

Adolescence isn’t a story about one violent boy. It’s a story about a violent system.

About the schools, families, algorithms, governments, and silences that raised him.

At the centre of Adolescence is 13-year-old Jamie — awkward, isolated, and slowly radicalised by a cocktail of neglect, toxic masculinity, and the internet’s darkest corners.

He’s not an evil genius. He’s not even “bad.”

He’s a kid.

A kid raised in a home where power = manhood.

In a school where bullying goes unnoticed and gender roles go unchallenged.

And online, where influencers, and endless reels are teaching him that women are objects, weakness is failure, and violence is sometimes justified.

The scariest part is that nothing about Jamie felt far-fetched.

It felt familiar.

This isn’t just happening “out there”

As a woman in India, this hit close.

Because we know this boy.

We’ve seen him mocking his teachers.

We’ve seen him online, saying “feminism has gone too far.”

We’ve sat across the table from him, while adults — even women — excused his entitlement as “Boys will be boys.”

We’ve seen how girls are trained to protect themselves from boys.

But no one’s training boys to respect girls.

Adolescence captures this divide in brutal detail — not just the physical violence, but the emotional breakdown of a society that rewards silent aggression in boys and constant self-policing in girls.

Parenting isn't enough. It never was.

Here’s the truth that often gets brushed aside: This isn’t just about parenting.

Yes, parents play a big role.

But children spend most of their time being shaped by everything else — schools, peers, gaming chatrooms, TV, TikTok, the government policies (or lack thereof) around sex education, digital safety, and gender rights.

It’s not enough to tell parents to "monitor screen time."

We need schools that actively teach consent and emotional intelligence, not just math.

We need tech platforms to stop pushing toxic content to young boys in the name of “engagement.”

We need governments to fund programs that challenge misogyny, rather than quietly enabling it.

We need a whole system shift — not just better parenting books.

It’s about the boys and the girls

One of the most uncomfortable truths in Adolescence is that Katie — the girl Jamie is accused of killing — was also part of the cycle.

She bullied him. She mocked him using the same incel language the internet gave her.

Because when you live in a world that’s always teaching girls to perform toughness and boys to perform dominance — even the victims start playing along.

There are no neat lines here.

And that’s what makes the show so hard to watch — and so necessary.

We don’t need more strong daughters. We need kinder sons.

We’ve told girls to speak up, defend themselves, “be bold.”

Now it’s time we start telling boys that strength isn’t about silence, or power, or control.

That it’s okay to cry.

That it’s good to be kind.

That respect isn’t a favour, it's basic.

And to do that, we need to give them real role models — not just alpha male influencers or “nice guys” with entitlement issues.

We need teachers, uncles, coaches, politicians, fathers — and yes, even boys raised by strong women — to show them that masculinity can look like care.

The real question isn't who killed Katie.

It’s what killed all of them?

What killed Jamie’s empathy?

What killed Katie’s compassion?

What killed our ability to see the signs?

We won’t fix this with one campaign or one conversation.

But we can start naming the systems that are failing our kids — and start building new ones.

Because Adolescence doesn’t just show us what happened.

It warns us what’s coming.