Adolescence

Just finished watching Adolescence on Netflix—and I don’t think I’ll forget it anytime soon.

On the surface, it’s a crime drama about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a classmate. But the series unravels into something much deeper, darker, and more urgent: a study of masculinity in crisis, a system that punishes before it protects, and a generation of young people screaming into a void that refuses to listen.

Adolescence forces you to reckon with that question. The show doesn’t offer easy villains—it shows how boys are shaped by their environments, their screens, their families, and the systems that claim to protect them. It shows how a boy can be so immersed in online toxicity, so desperate to belong, and so emotionally starved that violence begins to look like power.

As someone watching from India, the parallels felt disturbingly familiar.

In the very first episode, the police arrive to arrest a 13-year-old boy in his home. The camera doesn’t flinch—it follows every step, every breath, in a single take. The parents have no idea what’s happening. The boy doesn’t understand the weight of what’s unfolding. And the viewer is left feeling disoriented, outraged, and deeply uneasy.

That feeling? It’s not fiction for many of us.

A while ago, something happened that shook me deeply. My house help’s minor son was picked up by the police, and for hours, we had no information. No reason. No process. No acknowledgement. Just silence.

We didn't know where he was taken. We didn’t know why. There were no answers, only fear. It’s hard to describe what it feels like to search for a child—caught in a system where visibility depends on class, caste, and power. We eventually found him, but those hours of uncertainty are burned into memory.

Watching Adolescence, I felt that same pit in my stomach.

The police in the series act with practiced calm, but their power is chilling. They don’t explain. They don’t engage. They extract. It’s eerily similar to what we see in India—where the justice system often operates like a fortress. And for those without influence, it’s nearly impossible to penetrate.

But Adolescence isn’t just about the system. It’s also about the stories we tell about this generation. We are so quick to call Gen Z lazy, entitled, or weak. We say they can’t handle life. That they have it “too easy.” But we rarely pause to ask: what kind of world have we left for them? We love labelling Gen Z as lazy, distracted, oversensitive, or addicted to screens. We reduce their pain to "growing pains," their resistance to "disrespect," and their silence to "attitude." We’re so busy criticizing how this generation copes that we’ve stopped asking why they’re struggling in the first place.

This is a generation growing up in the most connected and disconnected time in history—bombarded with information, judged constantly online, battling climate anxiety, navigating a collapsing job market, and doing all of this while trying to figure out who they are in a world that often tells them they’re not enough. They are constantly online, and yet deeply alone. They’re navigating a storm we don’t fully understand—and instead of listening, we keep handing them labels.

In Adolescence, the boy at the center is more than a suspect. He is a reflection of everything we have failed to see: how toxic masculinity festers quietly, how online rabbit holes become belief systems, how boys are rarely taught to process emotion—only to contain it or convert it into rage.

And it doesn’t feel far from our own reality in India.

We celebrate academic excellence but ignore emotional well-being. We talk about youth as a “demographic dividend” but rarely create systems that care for their mental health, safety, or dignity. And we still haven’t reckoned with how our police and justice systems replicate the very hierarchies and exclusions that fracture society.

But Adolescence also reveals another painful truth: the adults aren’t listening. They’re overworked, afraid, distracted, or stuck in their own unresolved trauma. And in the absence of real guidance, young people are turning to the internet to define masculinity, identity, justice, and power.

Adolescence is uncomfortable, yes. But it’s also essential. Because it forces us to stop looking away. It reminds us that boys need care, not just correction. That understanding needs to come before judgment. And that the systems meant to protect young people are often the ones they fear most.

If you work with young people, parent them, teach them, hire them—or even dismiss them—it’s worth asking: are we failing to see their full story because we’re too busy writing our own version of it?

Because the question isn’t just what did he do? It’s what did we miss?