Adolescence

[Lalalallalalala]

I just feel like I need to talk about this programme.

I am almost finished , don’t know if I can carry on. I’ve done a lot of training about Incels due to my job and I’ve always found it very scary and think it’s something that young boys could be so easily drawn in to. I hope this opens up lots of conversations .

I also found it a hard watch as my son is almost the same age as Jamie. I can’t imagine how it would feel as a parent . In cases like this we always - obviously - think of the victim and their family . But , no one thinks of the family of the murderer. The only way I could think of it is - if you were ever that parent - you lose your child , but no one cares . You aren’t allowed to be sad , people would say “ good riddance , the world’s a better place “ . Because my son is the same age I kept looking at Jamie and imagining it as if it was my son - watching him have to be strip searched , seeing him locked away and you can’t go to him. Seeing him scared and crying and you can’t make it better - because how can you console your child if they have murdered another? When the Dad saw the cctv and Jamie was crying and he reached out to his dad and he pushed him away and then hugged him tightly. Just honestly heartbreaking .

It made me think in a way - what’s worse ? Losing your child or them murdering another and going to prison. I don’t want that to come across wrong , like I am downplaying losing a child … however I say it I’m sure it will come across wrong but I mean if your child does that you do lose them don’t you ? I don’t mean is it worse to have a child murdered or in prison … But there’s no sympathy for you or support. They’re gone - the child you love is gone. How do you go on knowing your child is in prison , away from you . But even though you can see them you always know what they have done and that a family are going through horrendous pain because of your child. You can’t just switch off your love for your child can you .

I went to bed after watching it and my little boy had left one of his teddies on my bed in a sleep mask … something so cute and innocent. Then I think , there are children the same age as him who have killed another .

Honestly it’s really messed with my head !

What about the lifelong influence of his father @Lalalallalalala . Because I wouldn't want a son of mine under the daily influence of a man like that.

Have you considered the lad's starting point in terms of attitude towards women after 14 years of living with a misogynist? I know that his starting point would be a very different one to the young males in my family/extended family.

AT is a despicable specimen but it isn't all internet/AT is it?

My own kids had strict screentimes and IOS filters. Neither of them broke through. If they had I would have removed their phones and unplugged the wifi if I had to. The difference being that I give a shit.

This is about much more than AT, it is about family dynamics, expectations and parenting standards at home.

Boys who choose to watch and therefore are influenced by dangerous individuals become dangerous individuals.

There i have corrected that sentence for you. We need to teach our boys, every boy the risks and dangers they choose to engage it

I hope you are right. However some of the strictest parents had the kids who were the quickest at getting round the problem.

I know I'm right.

I'm staggered by the hysteria created by this TV show tbh.

I've been reluctant to comment on this but I did an, 'Introduction to social work' course here in France about a year ago.

I only wanted to get approved to be a childminder, officially, nothing too deep and thought that three month course would have been enough to prove to everybody that I wasn't too bad as a person etc.

It was a far more diverse curriculum than I thought it would be and in some ways excluded perfectly good people who couldn't be bothered to grasp the ins and outs of Simone Veil's philosophy on life.

We all had to prepare presentations about various topics and I decided to do a three minute talk about the rise of incel culture.

Complete incomprehension and derision.

"That's only in America."
"I don't see what you are talking about."

Well, Netflix seems to be broadcasting a French translation of Adolescence now.

I rest my case.

PS I would like very much to take this issue up with my ex tutor on the course who so vehementally disagreed with me on this subject but she's left the local authority teaching contingent now to do crystal healing and family tree intergenerational trauma therapy up in some village for Goodness Knows How Much A Pop For Hapless Burkes From Paris. She's also an heiress to a winery. Funny that.

Op misogyny is around us all the time every day unfortunately.

Why are you staggered,?

Its one of the biggest problems currently facing society.

Every level of society.

The main difference is, even if your child has done something completely horrendous, there’s still hope… Hope of rehabilitation, of reconciliation, of forgiveness. Even it takes 5 years, 10, 50 or a lifetime. Even if it was so completely awful that rationally, it might never happen, that hope, that possibility is still there.

Whereas when your child is gone, they’re gone forever. There’s no hope left.

The parents were fairly lax in that they let him roam the streets until 10.30 in year 8 without wondering where he was, let him be on his computer until 1am saying afterwards- what could we do? Well, take the computer off him, turn WiFi off, etc. not just let him go to bed past 1am online. They had no protections on his phone.

on the flip side, despite the fact they didn’t check in on him enough and the fact his dad was disappointed in his sons lack of sportiness and strength, I didn’t feel enough was going on at home, even with all the incel influences for him to leap to murder. He went to Katie at her lowest point when she’d had her topless pictured shared round the school and was annoyed she didn’t fancy him. Then she made comments on his instagram. Then he committed premeditated murder. I found it a leap.

saying all that, the acting was great. I also have a year 8 son (who is totally oblivious to all these emoji meanings and what an incel is) but it was a hard watch at times.

That is absolute tosh.

Have you got any evidence to support that claim @Icedlatteplease ?

Have you actually done any research on this topic?

I spend a lot of time on google scholar. A quick one minute search would indicate that this is not remotely one of the biggest problems facing society.

Would be great if you could post something of relevance to back up your statement.

What about those that don’t have anyone to teach them not to?

I don’t think young boys are searching this knowing what it is without ever seeing anything about it?

Do you know anything about this online world ? About how they target vulnerable young boys ?

I - sadly - know grown men who are taken in by AT and say things like “ he’s actually a good bloke , he’s misunderstood “ that’s grown men who know better , not young boys who don’t .

It’s a very tough world we’re living in, I’m always onto the kids about girls, women and respect but you do sometimes get the impression that their generation believe that men and boys have been made into the underdog. They say everything now is saying girls should go for it but there isn’t the same push and boys aren’t told in the same way. I’ve told them well women have had to endure and they say look at ads etc it’s always a man that does something stupid, or gets stuff wrong. I’m lucky in that they have enough friends who are girls and their cousins etc etc but them saying that does tell me we have something of a gender war in teenage society, and they’re forgetting it’s all better if we get along!

He was not 13.

So at a quick Google, (although if you work in schools these stats will come as not surprise.

51% of girls aged 16-21 had been sent or shown explicitcontent involving someone they know in real-life
By age nine, 10% had seen pornography, 27% had seen it by age 11.
The average age at which children first see pornography is 13.

Source Young people and pornography - Children's Commissioner

Also:

1. Almost a fifth of British women aged 18 and over said they had experienced unwanted sexual contact in or around school as young girls, but the majority did not report it.

1. One in 5 (22%) reported some experience of sexual touching, groping, flashing, sexual assault or rape whilst they were in or around school. Almost half that number (10%) say the abuse occurred ‘sometimes’ or ‘frequently.’ Almost 3 in 5 (61%) of those who had experienced abuse said they never reported it.

1. The findings also revealed that almost 1 in 3 adults (32%) aged 18-24 years in Britain have experienced unwanted sexual contact in or around school, while 1 in 10 (11%) aged 65 plus report having the same experience.

Source https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/67935/html/#:~:text=In%20a%20school%20year%2C%20246,than%2016%20years%20of%20age

One in five.

I'd say that's a pretty big problem.

He was an incel and online for years, from a teenager, getting more and more indoctrinated.

The age of criminality is 10 in the UK, the boy knew that murder was wrong and that he would get in trouble which is why he denied it.

The majority of 13 year olds manage not to stab people. He was not a victim.

I watched it last weekend and I have to say my biggest takeaway is the impact of the immediate family on the child. Jamie grew up in a family where his father was physically abused by his own father, the father states that he knew he would never go on to repeat this abuse on his own kids which is great, he managed to stop the cycle of physical abuse. However, the father in this had serious rage issues, like the time he tore down the shed. Fine, he doesn’t physically abuse his kids but for kids having to witness that level of rage is terrifying and it does get stored away, in the body or memory.

Another thing I noticed was when he was being interviewed by the psychiatrist he went from being relatively calm to explosive and the words and language he used didn’t seem to be his own, I’m guessing his father reacted in this way. In the last episode the mother said something to the effect that they raised both kids the same but that’s not true. No two kids are raised the same, even in the most healthy of families. Jamie said he noticed his fathers shame at his inability to play sport to the degree that would make his father proud, that has an impact on a child.

I have a son who is similar age so I was really interested in watching this show but family dysfunction, and its impacts, is what stood out to me more so than the use of phones. Just my opinion, I’m not an expert in this field but it’s what I took away. It’s a very sad story.

Definitely a perfect storm of family issues and unchecked phone use. But the fact still stands that this was highly unlikely to have happened if children weren't all connected on phones. Their brains simply cannot cope with it. I'm not even sure adult brains cope very well with it but most of us can manage to regulate ourselves.

I recently chatted to a teacher who works in a boys grammar school which is very competitive to get into. I asked her do you think the behaviour is better than normal school because they've had to work so hard to be there? And her answer was interesting. She said the behaviour is generally better than an average school. But that it has been steadily declining over the last few years. When I asked why she thinks that is. She said "phones". And went on to talk about how since it's become the norm for kids to have a smartphone by secondary, she is seeing the behaviour going downhill. The female teachers feel the lack of respect more and are seeing evidence of incel influence on boys as young as 11. This is a school which has a very high proportion of well educated parents working as doctors, lecturers, lawyers etc. They have no idea what their children are being exposed to.

Your comment has really surprised me. Can you say a bit more on why? This is genuine interest, btw, not catching you out.
I’m wondering what I missed. I didn’t see misogynistic unhealthy family dynamic.

I interpreted a loving dad, with a hard past, but who was doing his best not to repeat it - to raise the family. But very much absent due to workload. And now trying to protect his family but losing his marbles because he can’t.

I his saw anger after the vandalism - I thought it was legitimate , and then realising INCELs supported his son and then the violence -realising he and his family were being stalked and harassed by the vandalism perps. I can’t say legitimate reaction, but he was being harassed. It did make for uncomfortable watching - but it’s clear he was starting losing his mind in anger/despair. I could be the females were terrified of what could happen, but I didn’t read it as misogyny against them.

I thought the biggest influence was Jamie’s own self-esteem in the context of other lads - and their attitude of having sex or being fancied as a way of resolving self confidence issues.

He and his outcast friendship group had such a low opinion of themselves, and felt the only girls he had a chance with were ‘fallen/disgraced’ girls (which is misogynistic- but I didn’t see it learned from the dad). Jamie’s complete change of demeanour every time the psychiatrist asked him questions was terrifying. It could be that his dads rage confounded this.

But honestly, I read them as a very normal seeming family. Rage issues from the dad - yes.

And rather than misogyny - I picked up toxic masculinity bit for me. When the dad described all the dads laughing at him because he was thrown in goal they both got embarrassed - and that seemed to set the scene of feeling low and unworthy.

I think it’s undeniable that phones have a major impact on teens, and younger kids too. The stuff that’s available to view can be horrific and must, without doubt affect those kids. However, kids committing heinous crimes is not new. We only have to look back to the awful case of poor Jamie Bulger where two very disturbed kids, who didn’t have technology to blame, kidnapped and murdered a child. There are many other similar cases down through the years.

I work with teens so see them and hear them in action but, in my experience the negative behaviour is coming from personal issues. How is it that some kids will view negative material online and they don’t go on to murder? Some kids innately know that it’s wrong. You have other kids that due to childhood abuse and neglect have so much pain and rage stored up in them that the ability to self regulate is all but non existent.

Yes, the phone issue is undeniable but I think we need to look closer to home. Just yesterday a teenage boy told me he had no plans to ever iron his own clothes, it’s not something a man does. Luckily these opinions are in the minority these days but misogyny is alive and well and, in my opinion, it comes from the home first and is exacerbated by material online and the people they associate with. I feel strongly about childhood trauma and I don’t believe any kid is born bad, I think that it’s the people around them who mess them up.

For me the thing I took away is that in small and different ways everyone failed Jamie and Katie but obviously less is called out about her. For Jamie, the dads and coaches at the footie, the bullies at school (of both Katie and Jamie), the ineffective or inexperienced teachers, a dad who worked too long and had anger issues, both parents who let him out so late and left him online alone, the incels online who impact him and likewise the influences that let Katie think it was ok to post topless, the friends who gave him a knife, their parents who willingly or unwillingly let the friend have a knife, the social media companies algorithms … that list isn’t exhaustive just off the top of my head I’m sure there are others

The point being it’s not a simple case of just solve this one thing and it wouldn’t have happened, it’s the whole environment that kids are being raised in.

I’m glad others are also seeing him as a victim, not at all condoning what he did, But ultimately he was a victim too,. I knew girls like Katie, well how they portrayed her. It’s real, girls can be absolute bitches. I love how they portrayed how toxic some masculinity can be. We as a society need to be better but it’s impossible to police because it’s just too vast now. You can take your kids off social media, but it just drips over into school. I like the way they portrayed the school because some schools are like this. It just goes to show it’s not always the parents, parents get blamed instantly. But actually it is an also peers and the people you surround your self with. Thankfully DS17 doesn’t go out and the only social media he has is tik tok where he basically just watches stuff.
When I said this to a few people I almost got my head bitten off. We only had msn back in the day, maybe we were thick skinned, you knew someone was pissed at you by thier msn status. I asked dd12 if she knew about the incel emojis, what it meant etc. she looked at me like I had 2 heads. She doesn’t have insta and her tik tok is private which also gets checked by me regularly to make sure nothing untoward is going on.

You said "I am finding it hard when people start to sympathise with the perpetrators of these crimes." and my point is the OP never did that.

She sympathised with the parents of perpetrators, who as you should understand haven't committed any crimes and their lives are ruined as the child they loved and raised has become a monster and they will never get them back the same way. Feeling sad for the parents' loss here is not sympathising with the perpetrator, is it?

@Aoppley

What exactly is your issue with me?

I said "I find it hard when people start to sympathise with...."

I said people not the OP. I also then made sure to add a sentence specifically saying "this is not a personal attack at you OP".

So please get off my case.