Teenage boys are in crisis. The creators of Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ want adults to pay attention

“Adolescence” co-creator Jack Thorne speaks about his journey into darker corners of the internet, young male rage and what he hopes parents take away from the Netflix series.

The world for kids today looks a lot different than it did for their parents. A scene from the hit Netflix series “Adolescence” captures just how vast that difference is. In the show’s second episode, Detective Inspector Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) is at a secondary school to investigate why 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), the central character, allegedly killed his classmate Katie. Based on their Instagram interactions, he assumes the two were friendly, if not romantic. That is, until Bascombe’s son — also a student at the school — tells him he’s got it all wrong. The seemingly innocuous emojis that Katie commented with on Jamie’s Instagram were actually a coded form of bullying. The dynamite emoji represents an exploding red pill, a reference to the manosphere. The 100 symbol is another manosphere nod, alluding to a theory in those circles that 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men. In other words, Katie implied that Jamie is an incel.