'Adolescence is proof that boyhood is being broken before our eyes.'

*Spoiler alert if you have not yet seen Adolescence*

Everyone is talking about Adolescence on Netflix. And they should. This is incredible television. And it creates a valuable conversation.

The show opens with a jolt: police officers shatter the dawn and the front door of a suburban home to arrest 13-year-old Jamie Miller for the murder of Katie Leonard, a schoolmate barely older than himself.

There's no whodunnit.

We know the perpetrator from the beginning, although his innocent pleas make us want to believe it's just a terrible mistake.

Instead of being a murder-mystery, Adolescence forces us to confront the far more unsettling question: why?

Nothing can (or should) diminish the shattering reality that Katie's life was violently taken. It's devastating. Who has words for the landscape of grief her family now has to navigate? They are the primary casualties of this catastrophe.

But while Adolescence pointedly demands we recognise this, it directs our attention to another victim: Jamie. The perpetrator. And more broadly, childhood itself.

What emerges as detectives unearth elements of Jamie's life is a portrait of modern boyhood in profound crisis.

Watch: ADOLESCENCE Trailer on Netflix. Story continues after video.

Boyhood in crisis.

I'm writing the final chapters of my book about raising a boy right now. This week. This show has forced a rewrite of what I'm saying as I wrap the book.

Here's our challenge with Jamie. Despite being in a home with loving parents, receiving an education, and being a "smart" kid, Jamie is struggling. Like so many boys — literally, boys — he has been methodically transformed through a toxic ecosystem that most parents fail to comprehend.

At just 13, when he should be discovering his world through play and friendship — and note, he has some great mates — Jamie is instead trying to live up to (and is being measured against) a poisonous standard of masculinity propagated through social media.

The mockery he endured for being an incel — "involuntarily celibate" — reveals how our boys are being thrust into adult sexual frameworks before they've even navigated puberty. Jamie's cardinal sin is that he is a virgin at 13!!!

Jamie's shame is not just that he's a virgin. It's that being labelled an "incel" means he always will be. He'll never be worthy.

He'll always be ugly. He has no hope. If the 80/20 rule is correct, he's not in the 20 per cent of guys who pull 80 per cent of the chicks. He's a loser for life.

Image: Netflix

He's violating the "Boy Code". His masculinity feels precarious — but he's barely old enough to have a broken voice. And the "Man Box" beliefs policed by peers in the playground — kids who don't know him and don't care about him — unleash a cascade of shame, self-loathing, and ultimately, violence.

Jamie wasn't born with violence in his veins. But Jamie and countless boys like him are being victimised by an online ecosystem that feeds on their vulnerability with predatory efficiency.

In the third episode, set seven months after the murder as Jamie awaits trial in a youth detention facility, we witness Jamie's emotional landscape for what it truly is: a wasteland.

In conversation with a psychologist (who is assessing him by seeing his reaction to a half-sandwich with food he doesn't like, and asking him questions about being a man), Jamie desperately insists he isn't gay, fabricates stories of sexual encounters, and carries the shame of his disinterest in football like an open wound — another failure in his father's eyes.

When he mutters that he's "ugly," we're witnessing a child whose self-worth has been completely eroded.

Image: Netflix

When he pleads to know whether the psychologist "likes" him, we witness his desperate need to be seen, to be reassured – to feel like he is worthy; enough.

What becomes devastatingly clear is how Jamie's conception of manhood has been twisted violently out of shape.

But it didn't happen in the shadowy corners of the internet. It happened in plain sight on his Instagram feed. Parents and police (all adults) had no clue that Katie had rejected him. The teens have their own language. But when Katie publicly humiliated him, his fragile identity collapsed entirely, and his anxiety erupted into murderous rage.

What can we do?

Here's my take:

Adolescence isn't just television. It's a spotlight illuminating a reality many of us are reluctant to acknowledge. As parents, we often collude in our own ignorance, allowing a film of Vaseline to smear across our lens of perception when it comes to our children's digital lives.

Here's how I'm seeing it. Everyone bears responsibility.

Image: Netflix

The tech companies are accumulating the greatest fortunes ever built in the history of the world while denying responsibility for the toxic spaces they've created.

Our justice system processes damaged children through machinery designed for adults.

Most educational institutions have failed to create cultures that nurture emotional intelligence or emotional safety.

At school, groups of unsupervised children without positive role models are sustaining psychological wounds that may never heal.

Parents are not doing the job (perhaps many are not up to the job) when it comes to kids and screens — and in the case of the show, general boundaries. We must be aware of what's going on in their digital and their physical lives.

And the kids — the kids are making choices that will cast long shadows into their lives because they are victims of a society that simply doesn't care that much about them.

The ideological virus — Man Box, Boy Code, precarious masculinity — that colonised Jamie's mind endangers women and girls. But the devastating consequences are felt by everyone. It also destroys boys themselves.

I spoke with Rebecca Sparrow after the death of my nephew to suicide in 2023. She pointed out that boys are hurting girls and women, they're hurting each other, and they're hurting themselves.

This distorted vision of masculinity drives male-on-male violence and suicide rates that leave only shattered lives and grieving families scattered in the aftermath. Watching Jamie's family — his father in particular in his little boy's bedroom — fail to come to terms with what has happened might have been the most tragic thing I've ever seen on television.

As the final credits roll, we're left without comfort. There's no reassuring conclusion, no promise that Jamie will extract himself from the toxic ideological quicksand that has consumed him.

The victim's family are wrongly condemned to a lifetime of suffering. And Jamie's family will bear the scars of his choices permanently too. The show refuses to offer false hope. It leaves us in discomfort, precisely where we need to be.

Because here's the uncomfortable truth: at this moment, thousands of boys are hunched over screens absorbing the same poisonous narratives that transformed Jamie from a confused adolescent into a killer.

They're being gradually radicalised while we attend to daily routines, often unaware of the transformation occurring under our roofs.

Our boys are being robbed of the opportunity to develop into men unburdened by these destructive conceptions of masculinity. Their childhoods aren't gently transitioning. They're being compressed and corrupted by digital influences while adults remain largely oblivious to the damage.

The technology companies won't intervene. Educational systems are overwhelmed. The justice system is ill-equipped. And our boys continue to fall through widening cracks, emerging either broken by these pressures or breaking others in response.

As Richard Reeves wrote, "The construction of masculinity is a cultural task faced by every human society. It must be taught and learned and above all shown: boys believe their eyes more than their ears.

When the job is done well, men know they are needed, and for what. They feel seen and heard. If we don't like some of the versions of masculinity on offer, it's up to us to fix that, rather than to pathologise the idea of masculinity itself."

Adolescence offers no simple solutions. It simply holds up a mirror to our collective failure and asks what kind of society permits its children to be corrupted in digital spaces until they either implode or explode.

Katie is dead. Jamie is shattered. And the machinery that created this tragedy continues to operate, indifferent to the human cost.

How to raise boys who thrive: Practical steps for parents.

• Monitor your kids' online activities — Know what they're watching and who they're engaging with.

• Talk to them regularly (and listen twice as much) — Open communication is key.

• Minimise screen time and foster face-to-face relationships — Encourage real-world socialisation.

• Spend more time together as a family — Connection builds resilience.

• Make sure he gets enough sleep — Poor sleep impacts emotional regulation.

• Know where your kids are — Awareness prevents risky situations.

• Ensure they have access to great adults who care about them — Role models matter.

• Tell them the three most important words they can hear — Not I love you, but no matter what. They need to know they're worthy of your love — always.

• Our boys are growing up in a world that often fails them. It's time to step in.

Talk to your son. Guide him through the digital minefield. Show him he is valued — not for fitting into outdated ideals of masculinity, but for who he truly is.

Because the future of our boys depends on the action we take today.

This article was originally published on parenting expert Dr Justin Coulson's blog Happy Families, and is republished here with permission.

Feature image: Netflix.