Netflix’s Adolescence will be shown in UK schools, in bid to curb social media harm

“So to have the opportunity to take this into schools is beyond our expectations,” he said. “We hope it’ll lead to teachers talking to the students, but what we really hope is it’ll lead to students talking amongst themselves.”

Actor Stephen Graham, a co-creator of the drama who stars as the boy’s father, has told The Associated Press he wanted the narrative to focus on the seemingly ordinary life of the accused.

He said that when a knife crime among young people takes place, the first reaction may be to question the background of the murder suspect and how they were raised.

“But what if it’s not the family?” Graham asked. “We’re all maybe accountable. School. Society. Parents. Community.”

Soma Sara, who founded a charity focused on highlighting child-on-child sexual violence and what she calls “rape culture” in schools, said recent evidence showed the problem was “ageing down” to children younger than 10 — and it may be too late to tackle misogynistic attitudes by the time children turn 13.

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Her charity, Everyone’s Invited, has collected thousands of anonymous testimonies from women and girls describing groping, assault, sexist name-calling, inappropriate touching and other abusive behaviour they experienced on school grounds. Of those submissions, about 1,600 took place in elementary schools, she said.

“The testimonies show how early this starts, and how it’s children abusing children — that’s just the devastating reality,” Sara said.

Sara said that restricting social media among children, as Australia has done for those under 16, isn’t pragmatic. Instead, her group is leading education programs in schools to help children understand how to critically evaluate the pornography or misogynistic narratives they are exposed to.

“We feel the generational gap has never been wider. Parents need to be digitally literate themselves, and understand all these apps — Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok — because that’s what your children are spending hours scrolling,” she said.

The success of Adolescence has come during growing concern over children’s use of smartphones and the easy availability of pornography and extreme misogynistic content on social media pushed by controversial influencers like Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan. The dual US and British citizens face charges of human trafficking and forming an organised criminal group to sexually exploit women.

Gavin Stephens, chair of the UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council, warned last week that “the harmful effect of Tate is plain to see.”

Police in the UK are now dealing with more than a million crimes related to violence against women and girls each year, or a fifth of all recorded crime.

“This is everyone’s problem. And this is what Adolescence says: when a child is accused, everyone’s to answer,” Sara said. “It’s about realising that we’re all responsible.”