It is safe to say that at first glance, no one would immediately label Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) as a murderer. A mere 13-year-old with rosy cheeks, a coy smile and a love for outer space, he doesn’t exactly radiate the persona of someone who would brutally or mercilessly end someone’s life. Yet, as revealed in the first episode of Adolescence, we discover that Jamie has been accused of murdering his schoolmate Katie Leonard, stabbing her seven times with a dinner knife and leaving her to slowly bleed out in a parking lot. It is a shocking and emotional moment both for the characters and for viewers. My heart broke as I watched the police burst into Jamie’s bedroom to arrest him, startling him with assault rifles and spotlights to the point that he wets himself out of fear.
(CONTENT & SPOILERS WARNING)
Yet viewers quickly learn that there is a lot more to Jamie Miller than the boy who loves outer space and still sleeps with his trusty teddy bear. Jamie, played by the budding yet brilliant English actor Owen Cooper, is struggling, both socially and emotionally. In episode two, viewers learn through a conversation between DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and his teenage son Adam that Jamie had fallen victim to a cyberbullying campaign via social media, spearheaded by Katie. Using a secret emoji language, Jamie’s classmates accused him of being an incel, a combination of the words “involuntary celibate” and a subset of the online misogynist community known as “the manosphere” that blames women and society for their lack of romantic success. Furthermore, in episode three, viewers learn that Katie initiated the online attacks on Jamie after a topless photo of her was shared around the school without her consent. After seeing the photo, Jamie asked Katie out, believing she would be more emotionally vulnerable and thus more likely to accept. Hurt and upset, Katie rejects Jamie’s request, leading her to leave derogatory and aggressive comments on Jamie’s Instagram page, with his classmates following suit.
Even after seeing the security footage of Jamie stabbing Katie in the parking lot in the first episode that essentially proved his guilt, my heart still hurt for Jamie. As a victim of bullying myself, these four episodes reminded me of the awkwardness of my prepubescent days: the embarrassment that came with navigating my new body and looks, the burning desire to fit in with the “cool” crowd, and my newfound awareness of how I was perceived by my peers, especially boys. Yet as I watch Jamie navigate this familiar landscape, I realize that, unlike my childhood, adolescent development has been further complicated by the invisible, sinister workings that are social media.
I am not saying social media was irrelevant when I was growing up—trust me, I pleaded for an iPhone and an Instagram account as much as the next middle schooler. However, it’s reasonable to say that social media today is a much different beast than it was 10 years ago; the algorithms are more advanced, the content more easily accessible, and the platforms vast. And with this increased exposure to social media, adolescents like Jamie have come to understand their lives as transparent to everyone, constantly subject to praise and scrutiny.
In turn, social media has become a pressure cooker of sorts for kids like Jamie; it has pushed them to hurry their growth, to mature socially, physically, sexually and emotionally well beyond their stage of development. Even more, social media has left adolescents more impressionable than ever; with increasing exposure to more sexually-charged and misogynistic content and content creators such as Andrew Tate (who is mentioned briefly in episode one), young boys especially have come to believe that this content demonstrates the norm for how to treat women. For example, in episode two, Adam tells his dad about the meaning of the “100” emoji in Katie’s comments on Jamie’s Instagram. He says, “80 percent of women are attracted to 20 percent of men. Women, you must trick them because you’ll never get them in a normal way. 80 percent of women are cut off…”
Viewers later see this control tactic at work multiple times in episode three, often hailed as the cinematic masterpiece of the series. In this episode, viewers watch as Jamie, now in a youth detention center, and his court-ordered forensic psychologist, Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty), engage in an intense power struggle in hopes of understanding why Jamie was motivated to kill Katie. Among these interactions, one stood out to me; earlier in the episode, Jamie gets upset about being on trial, compared to his friends involved in the case who do not have to go on trial. In a moment of frustration, Jamie gets up from his seat, to which Briony tells him that he needs to sit back down to continue their session. In response, Jamie knocks over a cup of hot chocolate before towering over Briony, banging his fist on the table, and pointing at her, saying: “I don’t f**king wanna sit down! You do not tell me when to sit down! You do not control what I f**king…Look at me now! You do not control what I do in my life! Get that in that f**king little head of yours!” The session is then interrupted by a guard who comes to check if everything is okay, to which Jamie sits back down and asks for another hot chocolate while Briony sits in shock.
Watching this scene, I almost forgot that Jamie was 13 years old. The way he commanded authority, dominating and belittling Briony in the process like an angry teenager, was haunting. Still, there is a sort of innocence to the scene when Jamie asks for another hot chocolate; it triggers the realization that he is still just a kid who would probably prefer to drink hot chocolate with marshmallows rather than coffee. He is still a kid who likes all the same things as other kids, who yearns to be liked and loved like everyone else. However, Jamie’s yearning for love is not just a yearning—it is a necessity; a need to prove his masculinity to make him attractive and desirable, a need to dominate the women in his life to get what he wants.
The scariest part about this situation, and one of the major themes touched upon in Adolescence, is the lack of understanding among parents in terms of how to monitor what their kids are seeing on social media. With the increasing complexity of social media, it can be difficult for parents to navigate the settings and learn how to regulate the content that their children see or the time they spend on social media. When Jamie’s parents discover that he is being cyberbullied, they can’t help but ask themselves, “Do I truly know my child? Have I been a good parent?” These are questions that are all too familiar to parents yet further complicated by the invisibility of social media. They are questions that blur the already fine line between allowing their kids to grow and become independent while also protecting them from the dangers of the dark web. It’s a tender balance that is becoming increasingly disrupted by the inner workings of social media.
However, as Adolescence seeks to demonstrate, there are ways parents and individuals can protect the best interests of their children. Having open conversations about school and how one is feeling, as well as putting restrictions on the use of social media and smartphones, can go a long way in terms of protecting children from harmful content online. Some countries have already instituted laws aimed at addressing the issue of social media, such as Australia, which barred children under 16 from having social media, and Denmark, which plans to soon ban smartphones in schools. But beyond these changes, Adolescence also reminds us that there is one simple thing that we, as individuals and parents, can do to protect children from these dangers: tell them you love them. Remind them that they are worthy. Encourage them to honor all of their feelings, and to be both strong and weak. In the words of Jack Thorne, one of the co-writers for Adolescence, in a New York Times interview, “It takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to destroy a child. [I] just want Adolescence to persuade that village to help these kids.”