Culture: Netflix’s Adolescence Is About a Lot More Than Phones

Adolescence, on Netflix.

Parents often feel out of the loop of their teenage children’s lives. One moment, you’re picking a happy chatter up from school, excited to tell you all about his day and what he learned in class; the next, you’re wondering what your kid is doing up in his bedroom at 2 am, the light from his computer screen leaking under the door. When you ask him about his day, all you get is “fine,” if you get anything at all. You wish he was a little bit more athletic, a little more outgoing, but at least he’s home, safe, not running around causing trouble. Until one day, trouble comes.

Netflix’s new miniseries, Adolescence, touches precisely on that disconnect between parents and teenagers and on the challenges of parenting in a hyper-connected world where kids walk around with tiny, rectangular devices in their pockets that work as portals into another dimension with its own logic and no rules. Adolescence explores how being chronically online and exposed to all types of content, especially content that’s not appropriate for their age, is shaping the minds and beliefs of an entire generation, not only of boys but of girls too. It also discusses the transgenerational transmission of trauma, masculinity, and the role fathers play in their young children’s lives.