Adolescence talks more about us than society

Adolescence, the phenomenon series of Netflix's 2025 season, is not a treatise on what it means to be men and/or women today. Nor is it an analysis of relationships, how they are experienced in modern times, what young people truly feel, and how this is reflected in the dynamics they establish inside and outside the classroom. Adolescence is a snapshot of a family, of a thirteen-year-old boy arrested on charges of killing a schoolmate. While the show explores his motives and the circumstances surrounding the case through investigations and interviews, it never seeks to provide a generational explanation. It hints at deeper issues but does not fully explore them, making the storytelling and viewing experience even more human. "It's not our fault," says Jamie’s father—the arrested boy—played by Stephen Graham, who also co-created the series with Jack Thorne, while Philip Barantini directed it. "But we are the ones who brought him into this world," replies his wife Manda, played by actress Christine Tremarco. Meanwhile, the audience is left wondering what happened and why, inevitably recalling recent and frequent cases from Italian news—first and foremost, the murder of Giulia Cecchettin in a Vigonovo parking lot on the night of November 11, 2023.

Adolescence is a peephole into today's youth, between incel communities and Instagram

The show, which introduces terms like incel and uses Instagram as the main communication tool among teenagers in 2025, serves as a peephole that invites reflection and caution when discussing machismo, feminism, and gender equality. However, at its core, the series focuses on emotions—more specifically, the ways in which emotions are felt, what the characters experienced, and how these emotions were processed by both the victim and the perpetrator. What drove a thirteen-year-old boy to pick up a knife and take the life of a peer? The show highlights how every action is a reaction to an external agent or a condition often (if not always) fueled by society. A society that is flawed, biased, and distracted. A wound that shapes the course of a person’s life and can lead to acts of extreme violence. While Adolescence encourages viewers to reflect on the sick and uncontrollable rise of gender-based violence—which has reached alarming levels—the real focus is on magnifying the characters' inner worlds and their lived experiences. There is no attempt to lay everything bare, and the show’s many unspoken elements will likely continue to haunt viewers. But this is exactly what Adolescence is about: the surface, appearances that deceive, the refusal to believe that something deeper could cause so much harm. The bullying no one talks about, the revenge porn that has become commonplace even among middle schoolers, the belief that a child, safe in their bedroom, would never post sexist content or receive offensive comments. He’s a good kid. Our good kid.

The superficiality of society is the central theme of Adolescence, based on a true story

Adolescence highlights the recklessness with which we hand social media over to younger generations while failing to implement proper sexual and emotional education. It exposes our tendency to believe everything is fine simply because we don’t see the rot beneath the surface—though it is there. It underscores how individual problems spill over into the community we all live in. Yet, it is also a series that never arrogantly claims to teach a lesson; instead, it simply says: look closer, look better, pay attention, talk. Don’t look away, and above all, don’t take everything for granted. Perhaps this is what makes the show hit so hard and leaves viewers shocked and unsettled—because it isn’t a theoretical discussion, but rather an event that could happen to any of us. Even, and especially, when we least expect it.