Lessons from Netflix’s “Adolescence”

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Reena Ninan: 

Episode #213: Lessons from Netflix’s Adolescence. So we haven’t really done this before where there’s a moment in pop culture that talks about and dissects teenage life in a way that we felt we had to come on, do a special episode and talk about the big findings. Right, Lisa? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Yeah, no, is important and worth it. And I’m thrilled that we’re thinking about this together. 

Reena Ninan:

We’re talking about the British TV series on Netflix called Adolescence. It’s really taken the channel by storm. Everyone’s buzzing about this. In just four episodes, this limited series tells the story of a 13-year-old British boy named Jamie Miller. He’s accused of murdering a female student named Katie Leonard. And you see the impact that this crime has on the family and the community. The series is devastating, but it’s actually not based on one particular family story or one singular event. It’s really inspired by the toxic internet subculture that we all know about and the terrifying rise in violence among youth in the United Kingdom. So it’s based loosely on these news stories. I thought it was powerful. And I got to tell you, Lisa, my Netflix algorithm, the last thing we watched was my daughter and I watched the Meghan Markle latest series where, by the way, we did make the one-pot pasta, which is absolutely delicious. So I am for any Netflix series that gets my children to cook on the weekends. But I have to tell you, it was a dad friend of ours who suggested we do something on this. And I didn’t want to watch this because I was terrified. What was your take? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

I actually was pretty reluctant to watch it too, or anxious about watching it. You know, I knew it was a really rough story and I knew the title was Adolescence and Reena, was like, man, like a negative view of teenagers, like the title “Adolescence” about a heavy thing. And so in that way, I was like, I hope it’s not hard on teenagers or unfair to teenagers. 

Reena Ninan:

But can I tell you, I disagree with you. I thought it was a beautiful name. Because this TV series captures what it is like in this current moment around the world to be an adolescent. And even though the family’s British, and they don’t look like my family in any way, but I felt like, my gosh, this is our family. There are just so many dynamics that I think is resonant to people around the world. 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

I think it’s true. And in the end, I can, I’ll let that go because the series itself I thought was extraordinary, like unbelievable, layered and nuanced and brilliantly acted. 

Reena Ninan: 

Yeah. So can we get into it? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Yeah, let’s do it. 

Reena Ninan: 

I’m just dying to ask you these questions. You know, you really see the culture of dads and boys, fathers and sons. You see that culture. I’m curious what your takeaway was in seeing that relationship play out on screen. 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

You know, Reena, you actually write to what I think this thing’s about, right? And this is what I think it’s about, right? This is a great piece of art, like a great piece of art, like means different things to different people. When I finished it, I was like, my gosh, this is about men and boys and emotion and what is allowed and what is not allowed. And you know, what comes blazing across the screen is that this dad who is in so many ways so lovely and trying so hard to be a good, earnest dad and husband and be better than his dad was, he himself struggles with rages. And we see that this has probably shaped how Jamie manages his feelings. And I’ll just say it here, one of the things I wrote about in The Emotional Lives of Teenagers is we have research on this, that girls and women enjoy this, I call it like a wide emotional highway, right? All the lanes, they can be angry, they can be sad, they can be embarrassed, they can be upset. And we see over and over again in the literature, boys and men allow each other, right? This is very much policed by the boys and men themselves, two lanes, anger and pleasure at someone else’s expense. And everything else is not seen as a valuable or allowable for them in many, many cultures and subcultures. And I feel like this TV series told that story. 

Reena Ninan: 

What do you think this show gets right about the adolescent experience? 

Lisa Damour, PhD:

I think it gets so much right, you know, so just to hone in on one piece: I think it really, really gets at how painful and uncomfortable it can be to be a middle school boy. The main characters in the eighth grade are his friends. And, you know, it really gets at how small they can be made to feel, how much humiliation and shame comes with it. You know, and it’s interesting, Reena, this kid wasn’t a middle schooler, he was a ninth grader, but earlier this week I was talking to a ninth grade boy and we were talking about like what kids give each other a hard time about in both in-person and digital environments. And he was telling me, like they give each other a hard time for being short. 

Reena Ninan:

Yeah, I can tell you. Absolutely. 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Yeah, it just broke my heart because I was like, first of all, a lot of middle school boys are short and many of them may or may not ever be tall, but a lot of them are shorter than the girls at least at that time. And they all hate or they talk about hating, like losing to a girl is the worst thing in the world. So I was like, holy moly, like to be made a fun of something where you have no power to do anything about it. I think that this series did an incredible job of getting at the ways in which boys struggle with feeling small and then getting at how that just creates such fertile ground for people like Andrew Tate whose name comes up in the series who are these like flagrant misogynists who help them find ways to feel big. 

Reena Ninan: 

I texted you a little less than halfway through the first episode saying, I can’t continue on watching this. This is so painful because I have a son the exact same age and I can see everything this kid is going through in a strange way. It was so hard as the mother of a 14-year-old to watch this kid go through this. What do you think the takeaway is about how adolescent boys are trying to survive life? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Well, I think that what we see is they’re so often operating with a limited emotional repertoire. And that it’s got massive horrible ramifications and also massive horrible ramifications for them. Reena, I’m curious, as your son is in this space, how does he relate? Does he relate to you in the same ways or things changing? Like what are you seeing? 

Reena Ninan: 

That’s a great question. Your book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, one of the big takeaways for me, and you don’t dwell on it long, but enough to make an impact where I paid attention, is the importance of dads talking about their feelings, which I don’t think anyone’s ever said in the way you say it in that book. And you explain why that’s so important. And I see it now, in the sense of I see my son being closer to his father, in a way that like he wants to hang out with dad, he wants to do this with dad and dad’s opinion matters more. And I’m starting to see that, which does, it’s fine. Maybe it bothers me a little bit, but you know, we’ll move past that. But I think it gets it right that in these vulnerable moments, sometimes they’re clinging to dad. And that’s why I felt like this TV series is punctuated by these moments where you really feel like, my gosh, this is like my family. 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Yeah. And I think probably a lot of two-parent heterosexual homes are gonna see things that really resonate here. And yeah, Jamie wants his dad. Your son is wanting more time with his dad. You know, what I hear from my friends who have, you know, sons is like, it’s a lot of watching sports, playing sports. It’s a lot of like masculine stuff, right? And these guys are trying to work out what does it mean to be a man and how do I do that in a way that I feel good about? And unfortunately for a lot of them, it involves like not doing things that are girlish, not talking about feelings which moms do, right? More in the research we know this than dads do. So I think that as we think about what does this mean for family life, or what should parents who’ve watched this take away from it? I think first of all, yeah, guys are trying to figure out how to feel good about being a guy. And they’re trying to figure out this in the context of often having female classmates who are taller, stronger, faster because of where they are in puberty. Female classmates who are often ahead of them academically for neurological reasons. Again, puberty gives them this bump. So, you know, these guys feel small in lots of ways. And so the goal then is, do we help them feel good about themselves and how do we help them feel good about being guys? Because the deck is kind of stacked against them, especially in middle school. 

Reena Ninan: 

Adolescence is so about finding your identity, whether you’re a boy or a girl. What advice do you have for parents who have teens that are in that process? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

You know, it’s interesting. There’s so many layers to this, but one of the layers was around Jamie as an athlete. And frankly, like it not going well, right? I mean, there’s a lot more detail, but it not going well. 

Reena Ninan: 

Yeah. Which we’ve done an episode on this, by the way, because we’ve heard from so many parents about this, struggling with this. 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

One hundred percent. And actually let’s take that moment. It’s in our playlists. We’ve created playlists on specific topics and we have a playlist on raising sons and one of the episodes in there is “How Do I Support My Unathletic Son in Our Sports-Obsessed Town?” Because yes, this is a huge issue. So, but then they talk about him liking drawing, comes up, but they also make it very clear that that maybe didn’t feel permissible to him, or something he could take pride in because again, this gets coded as feminine for God knows why, but it does. Okay, but the takeaway, to answer your question, Reena: Kids have to have something they feel good at. They have to have something they feel good at. And I would say that is extra triple true for kids who may not be the biggest, strongest, fastest, may not be getting all of the celebrations for being maybe top of the class. They’ve got to have something that they own, they take pride in, is an ongoing source of self-worth. Sometimes it’s a skill they’ve got. Sometimes, and this is like, can’t lose on this, it’s something they do on behalf of others, right? Like that they’re deeply involved in service, you know, that they do something as part of their church or they tutor younger kids. But I would say identity development in teenagers is as complicated as anything in the whole wide world, but one thing that adults can do to help things move in the right direction is make sure kids have things that they are doing that they control, that they feel good about. 

Reena Ninan: 

You also see the change of generational parenting. The father talks about how he was beaten as a child by his dad, and that was just the way that things were handled. And he made a point not to do that. He vowed that he would never do that with his child. But he struggles with anger issues. What’s your take on all that? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

I thought it was perfect. Reena, watching this as a clinician, I was like, This is extraordinary. So the dad in the show who is lovely in so many ways tells the story of his dad beating him, resolving to never do that. But already as a clinician, I’m like, Okay, but buddy, you have been traumatized and you have had to metabolize this with the limited two-lane highway we give you. And then sure enough, the series gives us enough information about when he has been in pain and when he has struggled, he gets rageful and violent, not at people, but I can only read that as like, yeah, and so then that’s what Jamie sees and that sets the pattern of how to deal with pain is by causing it or getting it out in a violent way, right? 

Reena Ninan: 

How do you change that, Lisa? If for a generation you’ve grown up, those are the tools you’ve been equipped with, anger, rage, you can’t control it. Can you break that cycle, that generational cycle? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

I do think you can. I do think you can. And actually, I’ll tell you, there’s some beautiful works. There’s a book from a while back called “Raising Cain” by Michael Thompson. He talks about when boys are only allowed so few feelings, everything comes out as that feeling, right? So sadness comes out as anger and frustration comes out as yucky anger, and shame comes out as anger. It becomes just this sort of like all roads lead to Rome, right? It becomes where they go. So I think in terms of like, how do we walk this back or how do we fix this? First of all, we start with the understanding that kids of all genders have the same emotional endowment. They have all the same feelings, right? There are not “boy feelings” and “girl feelings.” They all have the same feelings. And then we wonder what gets in the way, right? So if a kid whose dog has died is suddenly smashing things in the backyard. I think one of the ways we could make an intervention here is to say, Buddy, clearly you are sad. You have every right to be sad. What is getting in the way of you showing this as sadness? Why is it coming out as anger? I think that’s a place to start. 

Reena Ninan: 

So by asking them, so can we put this into practical experience? If this is my son, how do you approach this? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Well, I think when they’re having emotions that are vulnerable, right, boys cry, boys totally cry. When they’re expressing a feeling that is, for lack of a better word, not usually “allowed” for boys, endorse it. Say you’re having exactly the right feeling and exactly the right reaction. And then frankly, Reena, and I know there’s not always a man on hand to do this, I would so much rather have that come from in your family, your husband, than you. If your son is teary, I would so prefer that your husband is like, Buddy, you know what? A cry is gonna help you feel so much better, right? 

Reena Ninan: 

But the culture, Lisa, is not, you you mess up in your baseball game and you have a bad day and you know it and you’re frustrated and you start crying on the field. Like, I feel like most dads are like, Suck it up, buddy. It’s that culture that we live in, right? Is that the right response? How would you handle that differently? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Well, no, it’s not the right response. It’s definitely not the right response, but you’re 100 % right that that’s what you’re gonna see. That’s what you’re gonna see. And I’ll even credit, as much as I don’t want to, the dad who’s saying that, he’s probably trying to protect his kid from getting tons of negative consequences for open crying. And I actually, read about this in The Emotional Lives of Teenagers too, that like, even though boys can sit there and be like, Dude, I would cry too, they’re also embarrassed for that kid and they often come down on that kid. 

Reena Ninan: 

What’s a better response in that moment? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Well, I think if your kid’s crying on the field, I think that loving encouragement of like, You’re okay here if you need us. Like, I mean, this may be totally unrealistic. What do you think, Reena? Like, what could a parent, and I’m gonna say dad, pull off? Because I want the dad to be the one modeling healthy emotions. 

Reena Ninan: 

And that’s the thing, until we have these discussions, I don’t feel like it is acceptable. I think the “suck it up buddy,” or they give a glance, you know, you can communicate without a single word. But I don’t think people are equipped with the tools, dads are equipped with the tools to say, “Hey, this is how you do this one better.” So how can we have this expectation on fathers that they need to do this better without an example or a template of how to do it better? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Yeah. How can they teach what they don’t know? I mean, that’s a challenge. So this is a conversation about men. And part of why I love this series so much is I feel like it was as much about the dad as it was about anything because it’s a conversation about men. So I think the question becomes, How do we create the conditions and how do men create the conditions where they can have full, whole and nuanced emotional lives? 

Reena Ninan: 

Well, you just summed it up. 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Because you’re right: If the men can’t do it, the boys can’t do it. 

Reena Ninan: 

What’s your advice to families to better support adolescent boys in these years? What should we be looking out for? Because so often they might be suffering in silence that we’re not even aware of. 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

100%. Okay, so something that hasn’t come up yet really in our conversation is where the internet comes into all of this. And it comes in in two ways: It comes in both in that there’s conversation about online misogyny. The dad actually mentions it in a very clever way. I thought from a scripting standpoint, he mentions getting misogynistic content when he was looking for gym-related content. And I thought very, very clever as a way to make the point that kids don’t have to go looking for this stuff for it to show up in their feed. And then the other way the internet comes into this is around kids cyber bullying each other and Jamie being on the receiving end of cyber bullying. If we think about like, what’s the landscape here that created this terrible outcome? It’s a combination of boys and men and emotional like lack of fluency, which seems very dry to describe the realities. And then plus internet environment with its hate that can come across like a downpour. Like it’s not just like every once in a while a post, it can be a ton of it. And the ways in which kids can be real jerks to each other online. I think that there’s real value. Actually, I feel like this TV series just gives us a lot to talk with kids about what happens online. And I would say to talk with kids about why we want them to not be online at 13, right? Because they’re just too concrete in their thinking and they don’t think enough about what it means to be a jerk in front of everybody behind your screen. 

Reena Ninan: 

Would you recommend this TV series for parents to watch with their kids? Lot of our episodes, we’ve done some on puberty and we’ve gotten feedback that people are actually listening to our episodes with their teens because it’s an easy way to have a conversation starter and to be educated. But do you recommend that parents sit down and watch this TV series with their kids? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Well, let’s get personal here: So I have a 14 year old daughter. I am not inclined. 

Reena Ninan: 

Why? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

It’s pretty rough and I think for a girl it’d be pretty scary. There’s a very bad outcome for a girl here. The series, I think in many ways centers on the boy experience. We’re centering on the boy experience. I would not be in big rush. Okay. Your son’s 14. Would you watch it with him?? 

Reena Ninan: 

Yeah, he’s 14. Absolutely would. I really would. My husband hasn’t seen it yet, so I want to get his way in before we do it. But I just feel like it is a validator of so many things that boys go into that I can’t talk to my son about, or he’ll be like, God, you’re asking about that? Roll his eyes. And you know, it’s that age, right? You don’t want to talk to your parents about these things. But I do feel like it’s a good conversation starter and a way to talk about why I do not want him on social media, and why I am scared. 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Do you think he’d prefer to watch it with you or watch it on his own time? 

Reena Ninan: 

I actually think he’d probably prefer to watch it with me. 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Okay. I think that that is a choice we should give kids. I think if it makes sense, and I’m just going to defer to people’s knowledge of their kid, knowledge of their context. I’m not going to tell people what to do. But here, if you’re thinking about watching it with your kid, I think there’s a couple of ways to go about it: One is I think you could say to them, I think it’s important for you to see this. Do you want to watch it together? Do you want to watch it alone? I think giving kids that kind of choice is very important. The other thing I would say, Reena, whenever we say to a kid, “You should do this,” or ask them about something. So one thing that is true about teenagers is that they are kind of egocentric. They always see things through, “What is this? Why me?” lens. And so I think a lot of teenagers would take that in as like, “You think I’m misbehaving,” or “You think I’m gonna misbehave and that’s why you want me to watch this.” So I think that needs to be accounted for probably in some families where you say, “Look, I want you to watch this. Not because I think you’re up to anything, but because I think it’s really powerful. It tells a true story about what boys especially go through. I’d love for you to see it and I’d love to talk about it with you.” 

Reena Ninan: 

I think it’s a great way to approach this. The last thing, Lisa, that I feel so many parents will see this and really just cry uncontrollably is the failure that the father in particular feels of how he parented and looking back. What’s your advice? Because you see him just struggling to make a life so much better than he had for himself. What’s your advice for parents who obviously are taxed to the max when it comes to work and juggling family life? What are the warning signs or the important things during these years that parents should keep an eye out for? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Okay, one thing, this is tiny: They show that Jamie had all this tech in his bedroom. You know I’m not a fan, right? I think there’s something to be said for when kids are using tech, they use it in public spaces, right? I think there’s value in that and it also helps us have a slightly better sense of maybe what’s going on there. So I think there’s that. I think that fundamentally, Reena, this is about trying to stay connected to our kids, connected to their experience. And the way we stay connected is how we approach these conversations. So the way to mess it up is for an adult to see this series and say to their kid, My gosh, the internet’s the worst thing in the world. I’m kicking you off until date-to-be-determined, if ever. A far more valuable and connection-maintaining and building approach would be to say: “I saw this series. I want you to watch this series. It has a lot to say about what happens online. I am so curious about what your experience is, if this resonates with something you’ve seen, if this gets it right, what you think is missing.” Going in as someone who is loving and curious and invested and who may very well make a rule saying, You know what, based on this, I am now firmer in my belief that this is something that can happen later, not because you’re a naughty kid, but because you’re not. You’re a great kid. But because there is so much garbage there that is so potentially dangerous. And even if it’s just not dangerous, it’s just awful that I need you to be quite a bit older because I don’t want you taking this in at your age. I want to protect you a while longer. 

Reena Ninan: 

I think it makes a great case and it’s really beautifully done. So tell me Lisa, what do you have for us for Parenting to Go? 

Lisa Damour, PhD: 

Okay, so Reena, as we’ve been talking, I’m very aware we’re talking about this from the standpoint of the suffering of boys. And I am very aware that this is a story about a girl who gets murdered. And I think we should come back and do an episode about the experience of girls given that so many of their male classmates are in fact looking at toxic content, misogynistic content, and that is trickling into in real-life experiences. At the same time, I think we want to be really careful of sort of playing a zero-sum game, which is if we’re talking about the suffering of boys, that means we’re not talking about the suffering of girls. We have plenty of episodes, we have big hearts, big minds. We have plenty of room to think about both. And further, so much of what causes suffering in girls and women is the way that boys and men suffer. So if we’re not gonna spend time on that, we’re actually not doing right by girls and women. 

Reena Ninan: 

I think we absolutely should do that episode. It’s a great flag and a great point that we weren’t able to get into. Well, I want to thank you. And I want to thank all our fabulous listeners and viewers out there who are parents who just want to do good and do better. And next week, we’re going to continue this online theme, and we’ll be talking about gaming online. Is it ever okay for your child to be gaming more than you’d like? I’ll see you next week. 

Lisa Damour, PhD:

I’ll see you next week.