Netflix’s Adolescence: So Happy Mine Was During the ’90s

By Jacquelyn Moore-Hill

(Spoilers ahead)

I grew up with nightly news warnings: It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?

The assumption was simple: if your kid was home, they were safe. Doors locked. Kids

inside. Problem solved.

But today, the most dangerous place for a teen isn’t sneaking out for a joyride or a

house party. It’s their bedroom—or seated right next to you. Just a few feet away, but

emotionally miles apart. Eyes down. Headphones on. Fully locked into another universe.

Netflix’s Adolescence tells the story of a boy and girl caught in that collision. It’s not just

about two teens—it’s about the world we’ve built around them. A leaked photo. A shame

spiral. A murder. While the show tackles toxic masculinity, mental health, and parenting

failures, it’s ultimately about the brain in its most fragile stage—adolescence—trying to

develop in the shadow of technology.

To adults, the internet feels like a distraction.

To teens, it’s where reputations are built, community convenes, and real harm happens.

In one standout episode, a psychologist tries to understand Jamie’s perception of life

and death—but what you realize is chilling: many kids today don't fully grasp death. Only

social erasure.

As a mother, I don’t see perpetrators and victims. I see underdeveloped brains, limited

tools, and exhausted families. We tell ourselves they’re OK just because they’re

home—but we can’t possibly monitor every group chat, disappearing message, or image

they scroll past in a single day.

And the tech industry—the one profiting off their attention? They’re not coming to save

us.

As you can tell, Adolescence evoked a few emotions. It starts in chaos and ends in collective

confusion. It leaves us with the question: What if we treated digital safety with the same

urgency we treat physical harm?

Most forget—mass school shootings didn’t enter our culture until violent video games

and adolescence collided in Columbine. We thought the danger was the video

games—not the emotional detachment that comes from hours behind a screen. We

couldn’t have imagined Instagram or TikTok—let alone how deeply they’d shape our

kids’ reality.

Years ago, I read A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold, mother of Columbine shooter

Dylan Klebold. An American kid raised on Nintendo, Nirvana, and 90210. If he’d lived,

he’d be 43 today. Just one year younger than me.

Adolescence covers the same terrain as A Mother’s Reckoning—parental guilt, mental

health, the influence of friends, and the duality of adolescence—where villains are both

perpetrators and victims.

Klebold described her son as depressed, likely suicidal. But Eric Harris—his co-shooter

and friend—was different: charming, manipulative, calculating, and bent on destruction.

He saw Columbine as revenge.

Adolescence offers that same subtle paradox: how the line between tragedy and

catastrophe can come down to who’s in your kid’s ear—or handing them the kitchen

knife. By episode 3, we understand Jamie: also charming, manipulative, calculating. No

longer the victim from episode 1, killing Katie was also revenge—an attempt to reclaim

power after a digital assault.

Twenty-six years and over 800 school shootings later, we still treat digital life like a

sideshow. But now, it’s not just an event at one school—it’s the collective conscience of

a generation, formed in both real and digital worlds.

Adolescence used to mean innocence and discovery.

Unfortunately, in a world shaped by screens, it can no longer be either.

Parenting has become a 24/7, multi-device job. We manage passwords, decode slang,

track screen time—and still have dinner waiting on the table.

But we don’t have a choice. If we want to protect our kids, we have to show up in both

worlds: the real one—and the one that’s real to them.