Adolescence and the Crisis of Young Men

This drama addresses all of us, whatever our age or life experience, whether or not we spend time on social media or have ever heard of the term ‘incel’.

The gripping Netflix mini-series Adolescence aired last week, and some are already suggesting it could be as influential as Mr Bates vs The Post Office – the drama that shocked the nation last year by exposing one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history.

If you haven’t watched Adolescence or know nothing of the plot, it doesn’t matter. Spoilers aren’t relevant. It’s not a whodunnit; we know who committed the crime within the first episode. Instead, it’s a whydunnit – a masterfully unsettling psychological drama that delves into the minds of young men struggling to find their place in today’s world.

Stephen Graham, who co-created the series with Jack Thorne, plays Eddie Miller, while Owen Cooper – who has never acted before – is eerily convincing as Eddie’s thirteen-year-old son, Jamie, who is charged with the murder of a female schoolmate. The unique filming style, with each episode unfolding in a single continuous take, pulls the viewer into the world of the Millers – their home, the school, the police station – creating a raw and immediate sense of intimacy.

The hidden struggles of young men

The title Adolescence is fitting. Many of us choose to forget our adolescent years. Who relishes looking at photos of their early teenage selves? These years can be associated with shame and embarrassment because the struggle is intensely and overwhelmingly private.

And yet, for too long, popular culture has painted a simplistic picture of teenage boys. A generation ago, the consensus seemed to be that only girls were the sensitive ones, acutely conscious of body image and reputation. Sex education classes in secondary schools focused mainly on girls and their struggles. Adolescent boys, by contrast, were presented as cavalier and happy-go-lucky; growing up into a man was carefree, testosterone-fuelled exhilaration.

But has that ever really been true? And should we need a blockbusting drama like Adolescence to blow this theory out of the water? Many boys are acutely anxious about whether they will measure up to the typecasted manhood that is paraded before them. Jamie, being quizzed by his psychologist, recalls playing football on Saturdays, failing to meet his Dad’s expectations, and it tortures him. In a few seconds, Jamie goes from banging the table and kicking over chairs to tearfully pleading, ‘Do you like me?’

This deep insecurity often leads to deception. To prove they belong, boys fabricate stories – about their achievements, their experiences, even their relationships. Jamie’s boastful accounts of romantic conquests are soon exposed as fantasy. But is this merely a teenage trait? In adulthood the same tendency can present itself in more subtle and respectable ways: how many adults, engaged in a conversation about a subject they really know nothing about, are comfortable admitting their ignorance – in certain company?

A generation divided

One of the most striking scenes in the series takes place in Episode Two. DI Luke Bascombe, the detective leading the investigation, tries to talk with his teenage son, Adam, about the case. But their conversation quickly collapses. Father and son are speaking different languages, utterly failing to understand one another.

Adam takes a deep breath and begins to describe an online world his dad has never known – the realm of the manosphere, incels (young men who feel excluded from relationships), and colour-coded emojis with hidden meanings understood only by the initiated. In that moment, the gap between them begins to close. For many parents, this scene will feel painfully familiar. The digital age has widened the gulf between generations, leaving even basic vocabulary feeling like a foreign language.

And of course, the internet has done more than change the way young people communicate – it has reshaped childhood itself. So too has the growing presence of knives in schools, where teenage disputes once settled with fists can now turn deadly. Towards the final stages we see Jamie’s parents, Eddie and Manda, desperately seeking to convince themselves that they have both been good parents, that they could never have suspected what Jamie was up to in his bedroom with the light on into the small hours. Any alternative explanation is too painful to contemplate.

I recently attended a safeguarding training day where one remark stood out: children who go to the local park unsupervised are statistically safer than those given unrestricted access to the internet. The so-called ‘Wild West’ of the online world presents dangers that many parents barely understand.

The real issue

And yet, we must not be naïve. Technology, for all its risks, is merely a tool. It can only bring to the surface what is already within the human heart. Forty years ago, boys gathered in playgrounds and whispered about things just as degrading and shocking as anything now found on social media. The issue is not new. The issue is the same as it has always been.

The school depicted in Episode Two is chaotic beyond belief. How much of this reflects reality in today’s Britain is difficult to say. But the headteacher – if that is what she is meant to be – is utterly powerless, her well-meaning concern for the police officers masking a total inability to control the crumbling institution around her. Poor teachers. Poorer children.

It would be easy to blame the school. It would be easy to blame the parents. But Adolescence offers no simple answers. There is nothing in the Millers’ circumstances or background that would furnish any clue that Jamie might become a murderer; they are a reassuringly decent, working-class suburban family (Eddie is a plumber) who could have stepped off the set of Brookside in the mid-1980s. Jamie Miller is not Robert Thompson or Jon Venables.

The only answer

The fourth and final episode is in many respects dissatisfying. Surely it is meant to be. We never get to court, we don’t get to see Jamie anymore. Instead, we see Eddie’s fiftieth birthday. The remnants of the Miller family try to carry on with life – going to the cinema, ordering a Chinese takeaway, playing Eighties music on an iPhone, reminiscing about school discos. But the whole drama concludes with Eddie weeping inconsolably in his son’s vacant bedroom, a teddy bear on the pillow symbolising the boy who will never sleep in that bed ever again.

Adolescence forces us to confront a hard truth: trying to paper over the cracks and sweeten the bitter pills of life simply through distractions and amusements will never deal with the issue that won’t go away.

What, then, is the issue? Psychologists and sociologists will never penetrate to the heart of the problem – why did Jamie do this? As the prophet Jeremiah says, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’ (Jer. 17:9)

I am reminded of John Wesley’s words when he first arrived to preach the gospel in Newcastle in 1742:

We came to Newcastle about six; and, after a short refreshment, walked into the town. I was surprised: So much drunkenness, cursing, and swearing, (even from the mouths of little children,) do I never remember to have seen and heard before, in so small a compass of time. Surely this place is ripe for Him who ‘came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’

There is no shortage of ‘cursing and swearing’ – and worse – in Adolescence. The setting may have changed, but the fundamental problem has not. And neither has the solution. The same answer Wesley preached in the streets of Newcastle is the answer we so desperately need today – for teenage boys, for parents, for all of us: the gospel of a Saviour, Jesus Christ, who alone can mend what is broken, make straight what is crooked, purify what is corrupted, and restore lost, alienated, sin-sick souls to God.

This article was originally published on Paul Yeulett’s Substack (paulyeulett.substack.com) and is republished here with permission.