I love Adolescence, but culture must stop demonising young men

Telegraph

19-03-2025

Last weekend, I watched Adolescence, the new Netflix drama about a 13-year-old boy, Jamie, who's arrested for stabbing a female classmate to death. We follow him through intense questioning at the police station and at a youth psychiatric facility. We see the repercussions of the crime at his comprehensive school, and on his parents and elder sister.
Adolescence is, without doubt, the best TV drama of the year so far. The performances from Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Christine Tremarco are committed, watchful, as if they were real people being spied on through a long lens. And then there's 15-year-old Owen Cooper playing Jamie – a living riposte to all those who say British children can't act.
Yet while I applaud the quality of Philip Barantini's drama, and the importance of the issues it explores, I can't help but feel that this is another cultural work that demonises young boys. Jamie is an angry young man, and I don't mean that in the artistic sense: he has been radicalised by online propaganda, become susceptible to the rise of incel culture, has had his view of women tainted by easy-to-access pornography. The boy, like so many 13-year-olds, is also crippled by a lack of self-esteem.
The columns I have read this week have been along the lines of 'why every parent should watch Adolescence'; and yes, it does serve as an effective warning to protect and monitor your child. But we need to make something very clear: Jamie is no everyboy.
When a hot-button issue such as incel culture spends enough time in the media, people tend to assume it has become the norm. Yet while Andrew Tate, influencer and alleged sex-trafficker (he has denied wrongdoing), has a horrifying global reach, it isn't as if he has sent every boy in Britain hurtling into the manosphere. Nonetheless, when such people get the oxygen of publicity, those who work in the arts start to take notice. This year's series of Chris Lang's ITV drama Unforgotten features a young autistic man called Marty (played by Maximilian Fairley) who has, like Jamie, become susceptible to incel culture. In our theatres, classic plays such as Shakespeare's Richard II and Pinter's The Homecoming are being retooled so that they become meditations on toxic masculinity. While social media must take a lot of the blame for what could best be described as a crisis among our young men, it's clear that the arts and culture could do more to help.
This feeds into what Gareth Southgate, former manager of England, said in Tuesday's Dimbleby Lecture: that boys need role models beyond social-media influencers. Southgate is rather brilliant at encouraging positive attitudes in young men – something expertly explored by James Graham in his play Dear England, which shows the England men's squad break down their defences and become touchy-feely in a bid for footballing glory.
But I'm not sure about the need for role models. When I was a young boy, I didn't look up to anyone. I thought pretty much every adult I met was an idiot. Yet I managed to make the transition to adulthood without too much of a fuss. I think the actual problem is the constant negativity surrounding young men; and this has been going on for too long.
At the root of the issue is the demonisation of the white working-class male, whose fortunes are linked to the decline in British industry and the rise in unemployment. Certain politicians and media commentators have been savage about such sections of the community, snidely metropolitan about the Brexit-voting 'white van man' whose views are startlingly different to their own. Many have, in turn, stepped in to exploit this silent majority, and the more impressionable minds have been curdled by Tate and his online ilk – although their influence is no longer confined to those on society's margins.
Simultaneously, the arts haven't been kind to young men. I remember the 2015 Channel 4 drama UKIP: The First 100 Days, which reduced anyone who was male and working-class to a braying beer-swilling lout. In the decade since, TV has become slightly more tolerant of maleness, but it has relentlessly highlighted the problems with masculinity: witness successful shows such as Industry and Peaky Blinders. Leading writers such as Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) always seem to explore the crisis through a patina of machismo. Strong and silent types, we're told, are simply bad. For your average young man, this probably feels depressing and alienating. If the culture around you portrays you as crap, then where do you turn? I think we know the answer.
It isn't just a problem on British screens. Look at our bookshelves. There has been a necessary swing towards more diverse voices over the past decade – towards more female writers, and those of non-white origin – but with this comes a danger that the adolescent boy or young man won't be represented: at least not in the deeply personal, subjective first-person genre that has become a hot literary trend. There's also a deeper problem: boys aren't reading. You might think that this is simply an old itch, that they've always struggled to engage with books – but recent data are alarming. In 2005, a survey by the National Literacy Trust showed that the number of boys aged 8-18 who enjoyed reading was 46.1 per cent; by 2024, 19 years on, that was down to 28.2 per cent. Evidently, there are many factors – a decline in literacy standards, a rapid rise in screen time – but I would suggest that we should urgently try to give boys books they actually want to read.
Across British culture, from television to cinema, theatre and literature, we need to give young men a break – and some help. Netflix's Adolescence should be a salutary lesson, yes. But let's not pretend that Jamie is the epitome of a modern boy.