My daughter will be 12 in a couple of weeks, a year younger than the boy in the hit Netflix drama Adolescence.
For her birthday, she wants a laser tag party, and she’s sent me a list of presents she’d like: Posca pens, hair accessories, lip balm, ‘cute clothes’, Nike trainers.
Like lots of other girls in her year, she likes Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, and she has started putting her hair in heat-free curlers that she bought from Primark with her pocket money.
But on Tuesday night I stood by her bedroom door and listened as she tucked in her ‘gang’ – the six or seven cuddly toys she has accumulated since early childhood, and who still (thank God) accompany her to bed.
She is still a child, still my baby actually, no matter how much she’d like me to believe otherwise.
In Adolescence, Jamie, the 13-year-old boy at the heart of the show, can no longer tuck in his teddy bear because he is in prison, having murdered a girl at his school after becoming caught up in the online ‘manosphere’.
His father, Eddie, played to heartbreaking perfection by Stephen Graham, is left to do it for him… and to torture himself for not doing more to stop his son’s slide into unspeakable violence.
With 24.3million views in its first four days, Adolescence is the sort of blockbuster TV that networks used to aim for in the 1980s, but which was long ago lost in the relentless march of the internet.
The critically-acclaimed Netflix series Adolescence, created by and starring Stephen Graham centres on 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), who is accused of murdering a schoolgirl
There is a sort of hysteria about this programme, and for good reason: it shows how we’ve been sleepwalking into a nightmare world where it’s perfectly possible for children to be raised by social media, instead of their own parents.
But I suppose the thing that surprises me most about Adolescence is that anybody finds it surprising at all.
Who knew about online misogyny, Andrew Tate and that giving your child unfettered access to the internet might be quite bad for them? Quite a lot of us, actually.
Amazing campaigners such as Laura Bates have been screaming it from the rooftops for some time now (see her book, Men Who Hate Women), while grassroots groups like Smartphone Free Childhood have been picking up support in the last year.
It says something about the deeply weird nature of society that it takes a fictionalised drama produced by Brad Pitt for everyone to finally wake up to it.
On any given day, at any given time, you can find real-life examples of Adolescence in the news.
This week, a court heard about the horrific crimes of Nicholas Prosper, a ‘geeky’ teen from Luton who killed his mother and two siblings last September (he had plotted to murder many more, at his local primary school). Before he was jailed for 49 years on Wednesday, a court heard how the 19-year-old had spent hours online researching terrible crimes.
This was also the week that Tim Berners-Lee called for tighter regulation on social media. ‘There is harm being done to our young people and to the online public square where humanity gathers,’ he said. When even the inventor of the internet is asking for change, you know it is badly needed.
Prosper pictured in Luton Crown Court on Tuesday in an artist’s impression for the first of his two-day sentencing hearing
Yet, despite all this dire evidence, I’ve often felt like I’m fighting a losing battle when it comes to not allowing my daughter any access to social media.
A year ago, as we prepared for her transition from primary to secondary school, I was adamant she wouldn’t be getting a smartphone (we were already considered a bit old-fashioned for not letting her have one in Years Five and Six).
Then I realised society is so dependent on these things that it was actually easier if I caved and got her an old iPhone, where I could engage parental controls.
There are caveats: no phone in the bedroom, regular checks at random, and – most importantly – no social media, not until she is old enough to be able to use it responsibly. (I don’t know when this will be, given that I, as a 44-year-old, cannot be relied upon to use it sensibly).
The adolescent years are tricky and tumultuous at the best of times, let alone with the added anxiety of places such as Roblox, a kid-centric gaming platform which was recently described by tech experts as a ‘paedophile hellscape’. Why are we willingly handing this stuff to our precious children? Sometimes I wonder whether I should have given my daughter a phone at all.
We are far stricter than many other parents. I’m often told by other mums and dads that if a child doesn’t have the messaging app Snapchat, they end up being left out. But if she’s being left out of a world where bullying messages and offensive images can disappear without trace – as they do on Snapchat – that’s just fine by me.
‘You can’t keep them from social media,’ is another argument I often hear. ‘It’s how they all communicate now.’ Again, they – the children, the tech bros, the algorithm – don’t get to decide how I parent. I do.
I understand that much like cars, the digital world is impossible to avoid. But we wouldn’t let our children walk out into the road without teaching them to look left and right, any more than we would dream of letting them get behind the wheel without first having lessons and passing a test. I don’t know why it should be any different when it comes to social media.
I think about this every time I’m inclined to give in to the 21st-century temptation to let my child run wild online, and I thought about it as I watched Eddie weep onto his son’s teddy bear in the final scene of Adolescence.
I’m grateful that I get to learn this lesson from watching a TV drama, and not from one of the very real tragedies that play out on our streets – and in children’s bedrooms – every single day.
Gwynnie’s like a fine wine – she gets better with age
Paltrow landed another cover of Vanity Fair
With her bonkers advice to insert expensive jade eggs into our vaginas, and pretentious chat of ‘conscious uncoupling’, Gwyneth Paltrow hasn’t always been my cup of tea.Â
But I find myself warming to the actress as she opens up to Vanity Fair about what it was like to go out with Brad Pitt (a little like dating Prince William, according to the ever-relatable Gwynnie).Â
She’s just so unapologetically herself, despite all the stick she gets. Indeed, like a fine wine, Paltrow, 52, is improving with age – you just better make sure it’s an organic, sustainably-sourced biodynamic fine wine, served in a very pricey Goop glass.
Who needs TopShop? We have M&S
As a woman who came of age in the Nineties and Noughties, I got momentarily excited when I saw the news that Topshop is returning. Then I remembered that I am 44, and I have a new version of Topshop – it’s called Marks & Spencer, and, like all my friends, I was up at the crack of dawn yesterday to refresh my app and get my hands on the new collection. Sorry Topshop, you’ve been firmly replaced in millennial hearts by a new (actually quite old) high street staple.
Sliders belong by the pool
Every year, the Office for National Statistics creates a shopping basket to measure inflation and show us what the nation is – and isn’t – buying. This year, virtual reality headsets are in, as are yoga mats and mangos. Most curiously, men’s sliders made the basket: those awful plastic sandals that should only be allowed by the pool, but which have somehow found their way on to feet marching on filthy city pavements. Here’s hoping they slide back out of the basket in 2026.
Rare honesty over drug death
I have huge admiration for the family of The Vivienne, who announced this week that the star died from a cardiac arrest caused by taking ketamine. ‘I hope by us releasing this information we can raise awareness about the dangers of ongoing ketamine usage and what it can do to your body,’ said Simon Jones, a close friend of the performer. It’s rare to see such honesty nowadays, and it will help many. I’m sending The Vivienne’s family all my love… and a reminder to anyone struggling with drugs or alcohol that there is always hope – and help.
Research presented at the European Congress on Obesity shows that the older we get, the more unreliable BMI becomes as a measure of health (body composition changes, meaning we can be a normal weight but unhealthy because of a lack of muscle mass, and vice versa). In an age of AI, isn’t it about time doctors ditched this old metric and came up with something new?
- Ever feel like life is a bit…too much? Bestselling author and journalist Bryony Gordon is here to ditch the shame and dive headfirst into life’s messier bits. Search for The Life of Bryony wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes released every Monday and Friday.
