What you really need to take away from Netflix’s Adolescence

The series is terrifying, but parents aren’t powerless

Owen Cooper and Stephen Graham in Adolescence - Netflix.

The clearest message to take away from Netflix’s haunting blockbuster series Adolescence is the internet is filled with vile, damaging influences, our kids are vulnerable and we need to, in the words of Jamie’s parents, “do more.”

The story is simple and jarring. Jamie is a sweet 13-year-old boy from Doncaster, with a loving family, who one day violently murders a female classmate. The cause is ultimately the profound shame he feels in his own skin and the safety of conviction offered to him by online misogyny.

It is a chilling and important series, superbly acted, and with a clear call to action: we need to do more to protect our kids online. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, has raised awareness about this, as have grassroots groups like the Smartphone Free Childhood group in the UK or Leonore Skenazy’s Free Range Kids in the US.

But having spent three years talking to teens and exploring their very complex lives as research for The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better and Live Better, I see three other messages that I hope parents take to heart and put into practice today.

1. Regulating tech is essential; staying connected to our teens is equally so

Staying connected to your teen is the way in which you, as a parent, can help them through a difficult, formative time in their life, at a time in history when society as a whole has only just begun to find solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing teenagers.

Governments have failed powerfully to protect children from the harms of the internet. Big tech has always known the dangers its products pose to adults and hence to children. To state the blatantly obvious, kids are more vulnerable to technology that is designed to be addictive. “Adolescence is a profound period of opportunity and vulnerability,” says Ron Dahl, founding director of the Center for the Developing Adolescent at UCLA. Children have the opportunity to become thoughtful, curious, active citizens who care about the world, or passive, lonely, bored teens who are vulnerable to the invective and hate of influencers like Andrew Tate.

Teens have less emotional regulation, are more prone to risk-taking, and have less experience of decision making than adults. That makes it more difficult to stop watching violent porn, to refrain from comparing oneself to influencers with perfect skin and bodies, and to avoid SnapMaps and its 24/7 offer of letting kids see just how much they are missing out. Tech companies chose not to block harmful and inappropriate content; or send alerts after 15 minutes of mindless scrolling to remind kids to connect with a friend IRL, or read a book. Naïve? Sure, but that’s precisely what developmental psychology says kids need: connection, engagement, activity. Tech companies could have designed features to protect sleep, building a teen setting that shuts off all apps between 10and 7am. With some of the brightest people in the world working for them, they could have done a lot of other things to protect kids. They chose profits over the promise of healthy child development.

More regulations and bans are coming, but they will not change fast enough or ever be sufficient to protect our kids from everything available through a smartphone.

This is why we also need to give kids the protection of connection to us. The antidote to cortisol is oxytocin. Human connection and love can buffer stress and anger. Those things need to be in place first, and sustained constantly, to avoid deep stress — not used as a sticking plaster once teens are deeply depressed.

But how can parents maintain this vital connection? In our book, we explain that the best way to connect with teens is through respect, refraining from judgement and (what they might interpret as) arbitrary punishments. The psychologist in Adolescence gets this, and agrees to not talk down to Jamie and not to “trick” him. She explains what she is doing to establish the trust to allow him to express his shame (at not being good at football; at being ugly; at getting rejected by a girl).

When we are connected, we can navigate unfamiliar terrain with them: from porn to feeling inadequate, from unhealthy social dynamics to drinking and drugs. This requires being curious. We need to be open to their worlds and be brave enough to ask hard questions. “What do you do when you spend time online?” “What do you see that scares you, or maybe puzzles you?” “When you find things that don’t seem right, come to me, we’ll discuss them. I won’t judge you. I will support you.”

Jamie’s parents admit they felt they were losing him. The dad had a demanding job; the mom knew he was in his room up late online. They ask each other: It’s what all kids are doing, right? Their bafflement is relatable, but not inevitable. It is hard to connect with teens. It requires patience, emotional regulation, a ton of trial and error, and learning from them (and then learning with the next one, if there’s more than one child). It’s absolutely worth the effort.

“Discussion is to adolescents what cuddles are to infants; necessary for brain development,” Rebecca and I write in our book. Teens need to explore ideas like toddlers need to explore everything. They are developing as thinkers and adult beings and they need practice. This is not the job of schools alone: it is our job as parents. To be curious about what they are doing, and help guide them toward the prosocial and positive, and away from the toxic.

2. Limits are essential

Take all devices away for sleep. It sounds hard to do, but it’s paramount.

Kids need sleep, and they don’t need to be in the vortex of the web at 2am. If they don’t like the rules, take away the devices completely. They are kids and it is your job to protect them. Just as you would not let them ride in a car without a seatbelt, you will not let them explore the internet at 2am. You love them too much for that to happen.

Kids also don’t need phones in classrooms. They distract kids from learning, which is hard enough without the lure of the entire internet, and they distract teachers from teaching, which is also hard enough without having to battle YouTube and 20 group chats. Parents can opt for brick phones in middle school when there is a lot of vulnerability in development. And if they have smartphones, schools should be collecting them on the way in and giving them back when they leave.

At home, when not asleep, discuss with teens the limits they need. Of course they have a right to be with friends online and to prepare themselves in the use of the technology of today. But they also need to have time to learn; to be in person with people and in communities; and to exercise. Allowing them to set limits over how much of their time they give to Big Tech—which is using and monetizing them—builds agency, which is necessary for adolescent development. So, help them decide on how much time to use on various outlets. It is through these conversations that you can connect and learn, or judge and be dismissed.

3. Find their spark

Adolescence paints a devastating picture of schooling. Unruly behavior, outright bullying, a profound lack of civility and order. But also a mind-numbingly boring environment. If we want kids to be engaged we need to do better in providing engaging experiences. School right now often feels like a grind, packed with meaningless content and not preparing kids for the adult world they will soon inhabit. This is not the fault of educators, but of school and curriculum design. We know how to do better, but choose not to. A colleague recently told me about a conversation with a kid who was defending why phones should not be taken away in schools: because school is boring. “You want me off my phone? Engage me,” he said emphatically.

At one point, the series’ police officers discuss the idea that every kid needs one thing to be good at. This is exactly what we argue in our book. Kids need a spark, an interest that will help them build attention, to focus and dig in. Through it they will build skills and mastery, and experience feeling the energy that comes with that. That energy is necessary for kids who feel school is not for them. If we take away the one thing that energizes them, we rob them of the capacity to be energetic

It is hard to know where to build these experiences. Schools need to offer arts and drama and coding and robotics and music as well as the obvious sports and academics. Every kid can find a thing, but we have narrowed school so much to grades and academic performance that kids are struggling to find meaning. And in 2025, with wars and polarization and climate change, financial stress and AI, kids need meaning to ground them a bit. That meaning can be found in poetry or drawing (as in Jamie’s case), or somewhere else.

Adolescence is truly harrowing. But the way forward is not just regulating tech—though we must. It is getting and staying connected to our teens, who are in formation and need our guidance, even if they don’t know how to ask for it.