Why would a 13-year-old boy brutally stab and murder a girl at his own school?
This question “why” runs throughout the four-part series, Adolescence, which premiered on Netflix two weeks ago. Why did he do it? Was it because of his friend who gave him the knife? Or the “masculinity” modelled by his father? Or the social media sites with misogynistic and hateful ideas? Could he be an Incel?
Throughout the whole show we are faced with a scared little boy, terrified of needles, who slept with a teddy in a bedroom papered with planets and stars… apparently as “normal” a child as he ever could be, from a perfectly “normal” family. Yet, capable of first-degree murder.
There are times when we feel intense empathy for Jamie, confusion as to why this is all happening to someone who clearly, (or so it seems,) could not have committed such a heinous crime. And then other moments where we are shocked and unnerved by his outbursts, and the casualness, with which he states, “she was flat”, both dismissing and objectifying the girl he had once asked out and then brutally murdered.
Around a quarter of 5–7-year-olds now own a smartphone, with three-quarters using a tablet.
Young people are being presented with toxic, hateful and/or misogynist material without actively seeking it out; which normalises and spreads these views amongst younger children.
So perhaps a more helpful question to be asking would be, “Is there a way that we can prevent this happening in real life in our families?”
Talking to primary-aged children whether you are a parent/carer or grandparent is an important part in preventing harmful attitudes and behaviours that may go on to manifest as a normalising or minimising of violence against women and girls.
People labelled as incels are not in fact ‘lone wolves’ as the media may often lead us to believe, but are a part of a sophisticated community which ‘display a clear pattern of behaviour’ that reinforce and amplify misogyny in a ‘cyclical way’. Vulnerable children (and adults) look for companionship to alleviate the isolation and loneliness they feel. They turn to digital spaces and social media where the Incel movement provides a community who validate these feelings. Consuming large amounts of toxic misogyny in echo chambers, which normalise Incel ideology and entitlement through humour and “banter”, these communities actually celebrate and encourage violent attacks on girls and women.
A few of our team watched this series and discussed it in a group chat, some of which I summarise below. All of us work in relationships and sex education and recognised the school dynamics, the teachers’ and pupils’ responses in many of the situations that we also work in.
It’s not just one factor that can be blamed as to why these behaviours happened culminating in the death of an innocent child, so our responses also need to be, multi-faceted and complex. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so we need to have a range of ideas to support children.
How often do we - like Adam’s dad - ask the wrong questions, because we are so far removed from our own child’s environment and don’t understand what’s going on?
And Jamie? Was he disassociating or was he consciously lying? Was he trying to manipulate the situation or was he actually lost in his own thinking and being honest? How could he be so terrified of needles, but also capable of stabbing someone multiple times?
There are so many questions that hang over the show and maybe filling in the blanks would have had a negative impact on the structure.
One thing we were all certain of, was that it was good that it would get people talking about these issues - and there were so many covered in the show! In only four episodes, there are themes around:
- the dangers of social media,
- society’s expectations of what it means to be masculine,
- the different meanings behind emojis,
- cyberbullying,
- sharing indecent images without consent,
- Incel culture,
- misogyny,
- violence against women and girls,
- navigating how to properly approach women and girls generally in society,
- how to cope with rejection and its associated emotions,
- parent/child, responsibilities and accountability,
A very sobering and thought-provoking insight into what young people are navigating in society today.
The fact that Jamie was 13, would imply that possibly we should be talking to our young people, before they reach secondary school. Do you have child in primary school? Have you spoken to them about social media and what to do if they see something that makes them feel uneasy?
If you would like to gain confidence in having conversations with your child/ren why not sign up for one of our parent workshops, online? We will be running a FREE 90 min parent workshop at 1.30pm on the 4th of April 2025. Email us here to book aplace.
We can’t promise to answer all the questions, but we’d love to support you to start conversations around the use of technology and media, and to address ways of speaking to your children about how they feel and what they see.
Primary education is about learning how to build good, positive relationships as well as being able to recognise bad ones.