Adolescence

We are all Jamies & Katies now

So, Adolescence.

I’ve watched it and read a lot of the critiques that have popped up.

If you’ve been under a rock, Adolescence is a Netflix miniseries drama about online radicalisation causing a bit of a storm here in the UK.

Here’s a taste of the sentiments over on very-safe-for-work LinkedIn. This is what passes for polite conversation about online radicalisation & toxic masculinity. See if you notice the same pattern as me:

“how easily teenage boys can slip into harmful online spaces without even realising it, as seen in Adolescence, and a call for us—parents, teachers, and mentors—to stay present, listen, and guide them”

“Perhaps for me the hardest part of watching this was that, as the parent of a teenager who I think I monitor social media usage appropriately, there is so much more exposure and impact than we realize.”

it forces us to ask: How many Jaimes (sic) are out there, silently reaching their breaking point? And what can we do to truly see them before it’s too late?

While reducing time on social media and banning phones in schools may surely help, relying solely on these measures is both unrealistic and insufficient [my emphasis]
The problem runs deeper, and in these calls for change, a crucial element is often overlooked—helping young people develop better emotional regulation.

There’s lots more powerful arguments for mums and dads to intervene more to stop online radicalisation; for schools to intervene and of course for men to change their attitudes. I can’t argue with any of that.

But like fish not seeing the water they are swimming in, I’ve not seen the arguments for regulation of big tech (of even just proper enforcement of existing laws like incitement to violence). I’ll offer a system solution later but I don’t want to make it seem like we’re not individually capable of agency.

Of course there’s self responsibility but why are system problems always exclusively put back on us as individuals to solve?

It’s like having a poison in the water supply and asking everyone to a drink a bit less water.

We are being groomed and even radicalised by the interests of big tech. Not because that is their aim. But because addressing it would mean an end to their business model.

Meanwhile, because of the narrative of the market, we may think we’re completely independent units, rationally calculating what’s good for us, but we are not. We are all susceptible to the narratives we want to be part of. Think about it? Do you share because you’ve fact checked every assertion in an article or video or because it feels true to you.

A neurological process called synaptic pruning, which happens during childhood and adolescence is where the brain eliminates weaker or unused neural connections while strengthening those that are frequently used — like clearing out old files to make room for better, more efficient ones.

Our brains aren’t working out what is factual and discarding things that aren’t factual (unless we want automatons for children). They’re working out (in part) what behaviours work and discarding the behaviours that don’t.

In the complex social environments we cohabit, this is one of Homo sapiens unique traits. We are forming a sort of shorthand for decision making and emotional hooks or triggers that are meant to serve us as the highly adaptive, story telling species we are.

It’s a vulnerable time. We are deciding who we are and what sort of people we are attracted to (platonic or otherwise) and who we are repelled by. Changing this later on is always possible but painful. You’re un-wiring and re-wiring hard won synaptic connections.

The process is well documented in neuroscience, especially in relation to:

• Early childhood (0–3 years): The brain is forming tons of synaptic connections.

• Adolescence (~10–25 years): The brain starts trimming those connections (pruning) to become more specialised and efficient — like Riley’s shift in Inside Out, where her emotional processing matures and gets more nuanced.

This is not my area of expertise, just a bit of reading I picked up from when our boy was the same age as the show’s Jamie. This stage of synaptic pruning showed up with occasional flashes of anger and of course the sudden and horrifying realisation that mum & dad were - surprise! - incredibly embarrassing.

I don’t believe in fairytales about some elysian past or ideal indigenous cultures. Young men have always been a potential problem due to the evolutionary need to both cultivate and use male testosterone for group protection, hunting and assorted grunt work. Male aggression - channeled or otherwise was not an optional extra. It was the default.

Back before time began (1994) the New Zealand film industry produced this little gem that distilled the problem through the prism of Maori history colliding with modernity.

Highly aggressive, domineering male energy with no purpose metastasised in Once Were Warriors into domestic violence and child rape. A haunting and in places horrific film but helpful (is that the right word?) if you want to understand the uselessness that many men feel when they lose the status and connection they had to the world through assertion of raw phyiscal power.

I could never see Boba Fett as anything but Jake the Muss.

But this is not a justification or even an explanation of what is going on today. The online toxic masculinity thing is just one of Medusa’s snake heads. If we are to avoid turning to stone in the face of unrelenting online radicalisation, we need to look in the ugly mirror.

[spoiler alert on Adolescence coming]

Not the one that says ‘humans, bad, nature good’ but the one that says ‘humans, complex, can go either way, why are we tolerating a tech environment that profits from boosting our most base instincts?’

Ok I might not make it as a revolutionary copy editor but you get the idea.

Because when confronted with mindless hate online, my default reaction is ‘what made you into this?’

In Adolescence, the character of Katie is not a caricature victim. She of course does nothing to deserve the horror that is visited on her, but the writer could have made her a fluffy innocent female victim. Instead she’s an emotional bully. She’s cruel to Jamie at a point where he’s ready to snap.

What made her into that?

And Jamie’s murderous turn is fuelled by a lack of emotional connection to a world he intellectually understands but does not feel. His transactional approach to asking Katie out when she’s feeling down in the hope that she’ll return his pity with sexual access is exactly the sort of calculation you make when you’re repeatedly told that everything around you is available at a price.

What made him into that?

She retorts “I’m not that desperate”

In a wiser world, where emotional complexity is encouraged and enabled by online culture, Jamie might see that it’s ok to fancy Katie and to you know, just ask her out. Even if that meant be rebuffed with a mean comment, he might then see she has a cruel streak that might not be healthy. Might see he’s dodged a bullet there.

I shouldn’t have to say this since we’re talking about a fiction - but OBVIOUSLY, killing her is not an appropriate response.

Or a wiser Katie might see that Jamie was a vulnerable kid like her and empathise. Rebuff him firmly but tell him it was sweet of him to think of her, but no. And not then also tease him online for daring to fancy her. Again - OBVIOUSLY, getting killed should not be an expectation, regardless.

But no. We can’t have that because the water has been poisoned with the idea that we’re not capable of such emotional intelligence. We’re not up to it because ‘humans bad’ and social media and legacy news is just ‘reporting facts’.

No they’re not.

No one wants censorship but we argue against perverse incentives in other areas, I think it’s reasonable to do so here.

We assume a free press is what we’re protecting but actually we’re protecting the right to make profit or gain influence from capturing attention and then selling advertising - that’s the model. At scale that’s toxic and power consolidates its agenda behind it.

Here’s a taste of the level of cognitive dissonance. This isn’t a parody website:

When the measurement is engagement, hate and fear keeps more eyeballs than wisdom or love.

Well maybe it’s a cultural response that’s needed. I’ve seen people talk about closing social media at 5pm and on weekends like traditional stores. Allowing space for other more human things to get in might be all that’s needed.

There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

- Leonard Cohen

Thing is; if that sounds radical that’s how far gone we are.