Adolescence forced the country to sit up and take notice. But what's next?

The recent airing of Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s harrowing drama Adolescence has promoted a veritable tsunami of hot takes from the UK political and media establishment on the apparent toxification of a generation of boys’ brains by the influencers of the so-called ‘manosphere’.

Such was the public reaction to the show that prime minister Keir Starmer called for it to be shown in schools in a meeting with the series’ creators at Number 10, commenting: “As a father, watching this show with my teenage son and daughter, I can tell you – it hit home hard”.

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As we have seen before in the case of the brilliant Mr Bates v the Post Office, a TV drama appears to have forced an issue onto the government’s agenda where all other attempts have failed. Those attempts, let’s just refresh our memories, include a recommendation from the Home Office’s own internal review earlier this year to widen the definition of extremism to include violent misogyny, which the government rejected. MP Josh McAllister’s Safer Phones Bill, which originally aimed to introduce measures to increase the age at which children can access social media, has also been watered down to obtain government backing. Meanwhile, campaigners fear that enforcement of the Online Safety Act, the UK’s landmark legislation, may be under threat from US government pressure in the panicked rush to achieve a trade deal with Trump.

Yet Adolescence, with its powerfully crafted storytelling, has suddenly got the nation – and the government – sitting up and paying attention.

This national conversation is well overdue. I actually wrote a piece for Big issue on the dangers of this growing scourge back in November. The team here at Shout Out UK, working to deliver political and media literacy education in schools and other settings, have been sounding the alarm for some time about the dangers posed to our young people by online extremism in all its manifestations, including extreme misogyny. Indeed, we’ve recently developed new resources, specifically aimed at confronting and debunking misogynist rhetoric spread online, such is the demand from the educators we work with for this guidance.

However, at the risk of adding to the aforementioned opinion tsunami, I think we need to initiate a more constructive debate on children’s relationship with technology, which acknowledges the value it brings as well as its disadvantages.

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It is undeniable that some young men are falling victim to the malign influence of online misogynists who are merely putting a gloss on the same old gender stereotypes of aggressively dominant men and submissive women, which have always held us back as a society. What’s new is the ease of young men and boys’ access to these poisonous attitudes via the internet and social media, not least since this content appears to be algorithmically pushed in front of them. This in turn may, in the case of those boys already vulnerable to misinformation, speed up their dangerous radicalisation.

However, the howls of outrage from parental WhatsApp groups, endless scaremongering comment pieces and calls for mobile phones to be banned for under-16s risk failing to tackle the root causes which are fuelling this vulnerability in the first place.

In her insightful new book, Blackpilled, counter-extremism expert Meadhbh Park interviewed 32 self-identified ‘incels’ to get to the heart of what motivates those who espouse violent misogyny. Her findings highlighted a sense of nihilism among some young men, driven principally by economic insecurity and loneliness, which makes them particularly susceptible to indoctrination by misogynist influencers who validate their feelings and suggest easy, sometimes violent, answers.

In order to address the vital issue of growing online misogyny and its grave impact on women and girls, it’s essential that we offer solutions, rather than merely demonise the young men who risk falling victim to this pernicious ideology. Educating ourselves, as adults, about the dangers our kids face online and helping them to avoid them is an obvious first step.

In Adolescence, the parents and professionals  depicted were entirely reliant on the children to help them work out what had led to Jamie’s radicalisation. Many parents know surprisingly little of their kids’ online lives and are completely unaware of these dangers themselves. We need a revolution in parenting and mainstream education which prioritises media literacy education and critical thinking skills, not just for our youth, but for the grown-ups around them.

Imagine children identifying misinformation, parents understanding online radicalisation tactics, and families engaging in informed discussions about online content. In our media literacy programmes, Shout Out UK is committed to working with educators and families to build the information resilience we all need. Let’s not just protect our children from the very real online harms which are out there, but also empower them to use technology for the many positive benefits it brings to us all. This is the brighter future media literacy unlocks.

Matteo Bergamini is the founder and CEO of Shout Out UK, an organisation that provides impartial political and media literacy training and campaigns focused on democratic engagement and combatting disinformation online.

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