Beyond Adolescence

WITH its story of a boy accused of murdering a girl after his mind is poisoned through his social media reading, the Netflix series “Adolescence” has deservedly won praise from its many viewers and stimulated debate on how to counter the toxic influences to which many young males’ online viewing exposes them.

However, this focus may be too narrow. The culture of male entitlement and violence is a broader problem. For starters, most of what boys such as Jamie Miller in “Adolescence” consume online is formulated and shared by older men of an age at which, decades ago, they would have been expected to set a good example. That’s changed somewhat. The proportion of middle aged men among those arrested for violent offences around European football matches seems to have grown and similarly, their representation among the racist rioters detained in Britain in 2024 was large.

The thinking embraced by Jamie, the boy at the heart of “Adolescence”, is part of a much wider grievance culture which is most obviously expressed in Donald Trump’s white male-dominated MAGA base, by men who feel threatened by women’s rights, anti-racist initiatives aimed at rectifying inequality of opportunity and historic injustice, and by foreigners in general. Trump is now appealing to this sense of grievance in introducing sweeping tariff increases, which he portrays as a fitting response to a world that has supposedly been ripping off the USA for decades. His “might is right” approach to international relations, rubbishing international law, treaties and human rights obligations, appeals to the same set of loutish sentiments.