If you haven’t heard of it, you’ve clearly been living under a rock.

With a 99 per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, The Guardian’s TV critic Lucy Mangan described it as being “as close to televisual perfection as you can get”, while Rolling Stone’s Alan Sepinwall hailed it as “among the very best things – and an early contender for the best thing – you will see on the small screen this year”.

Here in Australia the plaudits have come similarly thick and fast, the SMH’s Craig Mathieson, calling it “staggering” and “a modern classic”.

The show’s star and co-creator Stephen Graham, who plays main character Jamie’s father, was moved to write the show's script with screenwriter Jack Thorne after being horrified by a spate of violent incidents across Britain, in which teenage boys had committed deadly knife crimes against girls.

Lauded for its raw, intelligent insight and prompting of important conversations about teens and the many influences they face – including the notion of toxic masculinity, bullying and pressure to conform – along with the internet’s role in shaping young minds, it’s also been criticised for potentially perpetuating harmful stereotypes and raising a range of complex issues that are difficult to address.

‘Moral panics’ are nothing new

Associate Professor David Armstrong is an expert on behaviour, adolescent development and youth mental health at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

He says ‘moral panics’ focusing on the ‘problem’ behaviour of teenagers or women go back to the 18th Century, and often express loss-of-control fears by conservative social groups in periods of change.

Armstrong is from England originally, and moved here in 2012 to train teachers with specialist content on supporting students with a disability, inclusion and children with behavioural problems.

In the UK he ran an educational unit for young homeless people for four years, set up a project for excluded school students (aged 12+) which ran for three years, then worked as a senior inclusion officer for 10 years at a large multi-campus high-school, where his role included helping disadvantaged students who were gang members or in the care system, some of whom had “very misogynistic views”.  

Since 2012 he has led teacher education courses in South Australia and Victoria on disability and inclusion and advises state and federal governments, and non-government international organisations, on behaviour in schools and on disability.

While some have mistakenly reduced the series to being essentially a story about a boy who was radicalised online, Armstrong says Adolescence is more a harrowing dramatisation that while touching on several deeper current social issues impacting people and their families, is largely about a young person’s relationship with his father.

“It’s about fathers being absent, being caring and loving, and wanting to support their family, but being absent due to work necessities,” he tells EducationHQ.

“In the UK, as it is here in Australia, there’s a cost-of-living crisis, where families are working extra shifts, and overtime, and extra jobs to pay for an increase in the cost of living and that’s impacting kids and young people.”

It’s a dramatisation, he says, not an instructional video and is designed to provoke dialogue and discussion.

That it has, and while many are calling for more to be done in terms of educating children about the pitfalls of social media and toxic masculinity, Armstong believes it’s important for there not to be ‘knee jerk’ reactions by government in national conversations about the issues the series highlights.

Encouraging empathy, compassion and balanced thinking

“Parents, families and schools across developed countries are grappling with how to support young people in the face of poorly regulated social media,” Armstrong says.

“My concern is how to help young people have empathy, compassion and balance in thinking about the world when faced with distorted, misogynistic and far-right beliefs present in the media, especially young people already facing disadvantage.

“If we want inclusive schools and communities, this effort is vital.”

“My concern is how to help young people have empathy, compassion and balance in thinking about the world when faced with the distorted, misogynistic and far-right beliefs present in the media, especially young people already facing disadvantage,” La Trobe Univereisty academic Assoc Prof David Armstrong says.

The behaviour expert says helping young people learn to think critically about social media content and with independence is ever more important and should be an educational priority.

“Schools need the voices of parents, caregivers and the wider community to be directly involved to be effective [as well].”

Armstrong says what was clear in Adolescence was that the adults needed support and had not been there necessarily for their child, and they weren’t aware of the child’s radicalisation. 

“There’s a great piece in the Telegraph newspaper in the UK which said: ‘Andrew Tate is there for your kids 24-7 when you’re not’.

“Adults need support, parents and teachers, too, because they’re busy, they may not have time to notice changes in kids and young people that warrant some kind of action.

“And if parents and teachers between them don’t have an insight into the child’s life, into what matters to them and what their habits are online, then that’s when things can go wrong. Kids can get far down rabbit holes.”

Should Adolesecence be in the curriculum?

In the UK, Labour MP Anneliese Midgley has called for the series to be screened in parliament and in schools, arguing that it could help counter misogyny and violence against women and girls.

Armstong advocates care and vigilance if we are to consider its inclusion here.

“We’d have to be careful about using Adolescence because it’s a dramatisation and a worst case scenario of an extreme event, a murder. We’ve got to keep it in perspective.

“If we look at big studies around violence for example in society, actually the rate of violence across the world, certainly in the west, has actually decreased in the last 40 years, it’s actually gone down, so we’re living in periods where despite our concerns about misogynistic behaviour, it’s actually reduced, so I think we’ve got to keep it in perspective.

“If it’s using clear and purposeful excerpts from Adolescence to an age-appropriate group [you might consider it], but you’d have to be careful which parts you showed and have a really clear purpose that you were helping good conversations with kids.”

Armstrong is at pains to emphasise that it’s a two-way thing – it’s not just about fixing potential problems in kids, it’s also about adults, teachers and school leaders, understanding students’ world and where they’re coming from, what’s going on in their life and what they’re thinking – and having conversations with them about that and connecting with them.

“It’s the same for parents, and that can be reinforced by parents in the community, in fact it has to be.”

“If schools are going to show Adolescence, it should be embedded into curriculum around safe media use ... as a case study ... done in consultation with parents, guardians and the school community,” Dr Elise Waghorn, a lecturer in early childhood education at RMIT University says. PHOTO: Netflix

Indeed, the broader community and the media, he says, can undermine and contradict the goals that parents and teachers are trying to achieve, and so it’s a tricky balance.

“One of my concerns, with reference to the geopolitical situation, is that potential changes are going to push back human rights and a human rights-based approach, and legal commitments that Australia has made are going to be undermined in practice, by the use of this area essentially as an excuse for rolling back some of the human rights advances that Australia’s made, and other countries have made.

“And not just for young male adolescents, but people with disabilities, people in the LGBTQ plus communities and our First Nations people.”

Combined national response a long way off 

So far here in Australia, any broad, systemic approach is a long way off.

“We know from the research that Australia does not have a consistent whole school campaign that’s evidence-based.

“There’s some out there but they’re not consistently applied, and we see bullying and victimisation in the story of Adolescence and that’s an instant thing that schools need to have a whole school reponse to.

“There are some great ones out there, evidence-based, anti-bullying programs that are used consistently in schools and as part of that, teachers having the space and capacity to notice when there are problem attitudes, behaviours by kids in their class around negative views about others and bullying and victimisation happening.

“Because that can spin out of control and there’s a practical incentive there for teachers because, when you start to have a connection with your students and know a little bit of their world, then that gives you some space to be that good adult, that positive adult, role model really, to notice when things might be going wrong and put in place some early interventions," Armstrong says. 

The issue of males – young and older – in our society being unable to deal with perceived ridicule/embarrassment/shame and reacting by perpetuating violence on their perceived transgressor, is a state of affairs that is in desperate need of attention, and something Armstrong says is already strongly addressed.

“We’ve got great programs in place, like Respectful Relationships, that talk about that, and get kids to work through that, and schools can use them, many do, successfully,” he says.

“...And again, it’s important that teachers don’t feel it’s all on them – they’re part of a team, it’s a team approach, and this is where the problems occur, because teachers feel overloaded, because they feel it’s on them, it’s not actually.

“It’s on the whole school, the leadership included, and we have leaders in schools now, and that’s their brief, to lead on those sorts of initiatives.”