Pandora's Device
Why is Netflix's 'Adolescence' So Popular And What Does It Say About Parenting In The Digital Age?
As of the time of my writing, the number one television show on Netflix features a thirteen-year-old boy named Jamie brutally killing Katie, his female classmate. The four-episode limited series, titled Adolescence, is a viscerally raw watch that defies streaming platform conventions. There's no major plot twist, no narrative obfuscation, no big-budget special effects nor is there salacious sexuality. Instead, the miniseries defiantly embraces minimalism—everyday settings, ordinary characters, and four hour-long episodes driven almost entirely by dialogue.
This is not to say that the show is the sort of expository experience in which you can cuddle on the couch and double screen your way through it—quite the opposite. Adolescence, created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, is as provocative as television can get, and demands your undivided attention. It is also peak discomfort, posing questions with no clear or discernible answers. Of all the thorny topics it broaches, but won’t resolve, the series confronts the vagaries of parenting, the widening chasms between generations, and the profound malignancy of social media—how platforms enable the manifestation of fractured, sequestered personalities.
Which is why I can’t figure out how and why the series is as popular as it is. Perhaps its resonance lies in our collective unease—parents recognizing their own impossible choices, teenagers seeing their unspoken struggles made visible, everyone witnessing the collision of good intentions with devastating outcomes. Or maybe we're all simply drawn to the raw honesty of a show that refuses to offer the comfort of easy answers in an era when parenting advice comes in endless, contradictory streams of parenting influencers and bestselling child rearing how-to’s (Exhibit A: my wife’s side table).
Adolescence has stayed with me long after watching, not just as a gripping piece of television, but because it forced me to confront my deepest anxieties as a parent. While the show's premise is extreme, it taps into a universal parental fear—that despite our best intentions, we might miss crucial warning signs or make decisions that inadvertently harm our children. One of the central themes of the series is the terrifying reality that while we share a roof with these developing humans, we remain largely oblivious to the synaptic gymnastics and hormonal fireworks silently detonating within them, transforming them from our own flesh and blood and occasionally into a stranger right before our very eyes.
The most devastating scene comes at the conclusion of the series, or thirteen months after Jamie's incarceration, when his father Eddie walks into his son's now-empty bedroom. He sits on the bed and discovers Jamie's childhood teddy bear tucked into the covers. Eddie clutches the bear and begins to cry uncontrollably. At that moment, I could imagine him thinking that if squeezed the bear even tighter, he might somehow return to a simpler time—a more innocent era when a stuffed animal was the cherished companion instead of a smartphone.
I have to be honest. This scene destroyed me as I sat there with eyes full of tears, imagining the stuffed lion my own son was sleeping with in his darkened bedroom at that very moment. It also left me in a maelstrom of feelings—grief, fear, gratitude, and a desperate awareness of time's relentless march forward. In Eddie's breakdown, I recognized the universal terror of parenting: that despite our best efforts, despite all our love and vigilance, we might still fail the people who matter most. And that by the time we realize what we've missed, it might already be too late to find our way back.
In just six months, two milestones await our family—my eldest begins high school, and my daughter celebrates her bat mitzvah. These transitions carry particular weight in our digital standoff: my son already mentions Snapchat's importance in his social circle, while my daughter's coming-of-age celebration includes receiving her first phone.
The complexities involved in these significant life stages lie in a decision I made a couple years back: declaring a complete social media ban in our house for all children until they graduate high school. With the exception of WhatsApp, texting, and some games, their smartphones would otherwise function as glorified paperweights. In exchange for this digital monastic existence, I am paying them $1,000 annually—essentially making abstinence their part-time job. The catch? They can’t refuse this job. As long as they live in my house, they live without TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat—a parental dictatorship with a generous benefits package.
This will not be an easy policy to maintain. I anticipate the relentless, war-of-attrition negotiating tactics that only teenagers have mastered. However, I remain equally aware of social media's documented dangers—a conviction strengthened by both personal observation and firsthand research.
Up until last year, I had done a pretty good job of wrestling my algorithm into submission. I'd trained my feed to provide a steady stream of stand-up comedy routines, superhero movie news, the latest in sneaker wear, and upcoming collectible releases—a digital landscape curated for distraction rather than distress. Social media was, if not productive, at least pleasurable.
But after the October 7th massacre in Israel, Trump's inauguration, and the alarming rise in antisemitism worldwide, my carefully curated digital sanctuary collapsed. My feed transformed into something depressing, devastating, alarmist, disconcerting, and unsettling. What had once been a source of entertainment became a wellspring of distress. After spending years making social media work for me, I lost control—like a pet that suddenly remembers it's wild, my feed shook off my careful training and reverted to its natural state: chaos, outrage, and worry. So much worry.
How can I willingly expose my children to digital environments that trained psychologists and neuroscientists are only beginning to understand? It's not that I don't trust my children's intentions or judgment. It's that I don't trust the platforms designed by teams of engineers to maximize engagement regardless of emotional cost. I don't trust strangers with agendas who can reach my children directly, bypassing any parental filter (Adolescence, for example, makes several references to influencer Andrew Tate's insidious appeal for teenage boys, showing how easily his rhetoric infiltrates young minds seeking masculine identity).
My kids roll their eyes and call this approach "O.P."—over-protective—as if my efforts were some extreme parental overreach rather than a reasonable defense against unprecedented forces. They view my social media ban as an antiquated exercise of parental authority, a restriction from another era imposed on their digital native reality.
But I can't shake the image from director Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, where antagonist Alex is strapped to a chair, eyes forced open, subjected to the Ludovico Technique—a barrage of violent, disturbing imagery designed to recondition his mind. The crucial difference? Today's teenagers aren't being forced to watch—they're volunteering for their own reconditioning, eyes willingly glued to screens, absorbing whatever the algorithm decides will keep them scrolling longest.
Not coincidentally—as these concerns have been weighing on my mind for quite some time—and at the behest of my friend Brennan, I recently began reading Jonathan Haidt's book "The Anxious Generation." While I was wrestling with my own parental instincts about social media and watching Adolescence with a growing sense of unease, Haidt was providing the research and context to explain exactly why my discomfort was justified.
We all more or less know at this point what Haidt has to say–his "end is nigh" placard has become unavoidable in parenting circles. But just to summarize: since 2012—when smartphones reached saturation among teenagers—we've witnessed unprecedented spikes in anxiety, depression, and suicide attempts among adolescents. This isn't normal teenage angst but a genuine mental health crisis affecting an entire generation. The culprits? Constant social comparison, the disappearance of unsupervised play, algorithmic manipulation of attention, and the replacement of in-person interactions with digital facsimiles. Simply put, we've unwittingly subjected an entire generation to a vast psychological experiment, and we, the parents, are ostensibly wearing lab coats.
Yet, even as Haidt's research reinforces my decision to limit social media access, I find myself wrestling with very real concerns about potential consequences. What happens when my children are the only ones without TikTok accounts? Will they miss crucial social connections? Develop resentment? Feel perpetually left out of conversations that include references like “skibidi toilet” and “low taper fade?” These aren't academic questions but practical parenting dilemmas that make me question my own convictions. It's as if I'm Noah building the ark, warning of the coming flood, while feeling increasingly ridiculous collecting pairs of every animal under a cloudless sky.
Whenever I doubt my gut instincts, my brain gravitates toward the ominous prescience of science fiction. It's just how I'm wired—I find the darkest cautionary tale, dilute it somewhat like milk in black coffee, and discover that's where my reality exists. Case in point: the other day, I saw that Netflix's Black Mirror is returning next month, and it brought me back to the 2016 episode "Nosedive," starring Bryce Dallas Howard—a disturbing vision of a society where social media ratings determine everything from housing to transportation access. What seemed like speculative fiction has rapidly become our reality, with teenagers increasingly living in a world where their social standing is quantified through likes, followers, and shares. Their fear of being excluded isn't irrational; it's a response to genuine social currency that now exists primarily in digital spaces. Incidentally, “Nosedive” premiered just three weeks after the debut of TikTok.
I have a recurring fantasy in which I utilize my skills as a communicator, as a copywriter, and as a Creative Director. Where I manifest a most compelling, wholly irrefutable presentation deck in which I am attempting to convince my children, or the client, in this instance, that they don’t need social media. After all, I persuade skeptical clients to agree with my thinking for a living. Surely I could do the same for the only audience already predisposed to believe I'm the best dad ever.
My fantasy continues in which my deck is so persuasive that my children first throw me a parade and then relinquish all smartphone control to me. "Take this rectangular distraction device, father," they'd say with clear eyed conviction. They'd then don matching vintage cardigans and spend the remainder of their adolescence cultivating obscure hobbies involving typewriters and vinyl records.
Eventually, this magical presentation I concocted in Google Slides becomes viral and takes on a life of its own, spreading all over the world and convincing parents from Estonia to Uruguay that my way of thinking is not only sensible, but essential. It's like a mass awakening where parents collectively realize the importance of occasionally disappointing our children for their own good—that sometimes our job is to be unpopular guardians rather than friends, to protect rather than please.
Alas, this is a fantasy of the highest form. The pandora is out of her box. Our technological reality marches forward regardless of my parental concerns, and the future likely holds scenarios far darker than my hopeful vision. This is not to say that shows like Adolescence represent common occurrences—most teenagers navigate social media without committing violence. But between my utopian fantasy and the show's dystopian nightmare lies the mundane reality we're already witnessing: children growing up with diminished attention spans, increased anxiety, and relationships filtered through digital interfaces.
As I look ahead, with my first teenager entering high school, I'm now embarking on what may be the most tumultuous phase of my parenting career. I can't even comprehend all the challenges ahead. I may fail. I may do worse than fail. I am staking $1,000 a year per child on an experiment in which the entire reality is pushing against me. I feel like a man standing on the shore, watching a tsunami swell on the horizon—growing larger by the moment, inevitably approaching. Maybe I'll make it through. Maybe I'll be swept away.
But perhaps this is what parenting has always been: standing between our children and forces beyond our control, armed with nothing but imperfect knowledge and fierce love. We do what we can with what we understand at the time. And sometimes, being labeled 'O.P.' is simply the price we pay for protecting what matters most—even when we're not entirely sure how long our vigilance will hold.