Teenager dissect Netflix’s drama with worried parents

“It’s just weird to talk about your sexual feelings for your parents,” says 15-year-old Ben*.

His parents, Sophie and Martin, two professionals of their 40s, understand understandably. They discuss the types of “big problems” of the use of Ben’s social media, and Ben’s conversations about sex and pornography are the “bigger”.

Ben’s smaller sister, who is too young to join the discussion-gathered in their living room to dispel the hit drama of Netflix, which they watched last night.

The series follows the story of the 13-year-old protagonist Jamie, who is accused of killing a woman peer after being exposed to a misoginistic online material and subjected to cyberbullying.

Both Ben’s parents are concerned about the behavior of their own son is influenced by the material he is exposed to, and Ben, who is worried, is trying to determine restrictions on his own telephone use.

Given their concerns and how they overlap with adolescence topics, the family agreed to watch the program together and allow BBC News to sit in their discussion, which varies from Andrew Tate’s attitude to whether boys and girls can be friends.

Ben is sitting on the sofa in the living room, scrolling on his phone before the conversation begins.

Parents take their places that look calm, despite the difficult items they are about to discuss. Photos of loved ones arrange book shelves in the living room of the family, and the piano stands by the wall.

Sophie and Martin have worked hard to create a “very open” household, says Sophie, where “all topics are on the table.” As she was watching the program, Sophie made a list of things to talk to Ben.

A confident and frankly teenage boy, Ben is well liked by fellow students in his secondary sex public school. But the qualities that make him popular with his peers often land him in trouble with his teachers who give him the detainees or send him to isolation to do what his mother defines as “inappropriate comments.”

In the show, Jamie and his peers use a language related to the Mannos – websites and online forums encouraging misogynia and opposition to feminism – and Incel Culture. Incels, short for involuntary celibular, are men who blame women because they are unable to find a sexual partner. This is an ideology This has been related to terrorist attacks and killings in recent years.

Surprisingly, Incel was not known for Ben and his father Martin had to explain it as they watched the program.

“People are just called” virgins “. I haven’t heard” Incel “before,” Ben tells his parents. He suggests that the term may have “dropped” on social media for young people in recent years, reflecting the pace at which the conversation is moving online.

Ben tells his parents that there are elements of the show he admits, including depicting battles and cyberbullying at school. But he thinks this is just a “rough picture” of what it is like to be a teenager today and that it is made mainly for “adult not online.”

For example, he ignores to show the good side of social media along with his dangers, he says, and some details – including the secret emoj codes one hero claims that children are using – a ring wrong.

It is for this reason that Martin, who says that he enjoyed the tense drama, also believes that the show plays at the “greatest nightmare” of every parent for using their child’s phone, which means that it sometimes favors theatricality of realism in an attempt to “shock” adults in action.

Andrew Tate, an influence and central figure of the shadowy online world of the Mannonfer, is mentioned by name in drama and is the cause of great concern among parents and teachers. But Ben says that while Andrew Tate was “popular” at his school about two years ago, he is now “old news.”

Ben noticed the way Tate combines health and well -being with politics. “Some of his things, such as” hourly exercises, “supposedly fairly, this is right. But then he combines it with ideas with far right, with “the man has to come out and work and the wife has to stay home,” Ben says.

Both parents agree that Tate is not guilty of misogynia. As for them, it is symptomatic of a “greater social problem”.

This problem is very much presented in the gloomy picture of adolescent paints of male friendship in the social media era. The main character Jamie has no friends and seems to be examining relationships with the opposite sex through a lens of dominance and manipulation.

Sophie is concerned that the interactions between boys and girls are distant and impersonal in the Ben peer group. She says Ben does not have many opportunities to mix with girls of his age.

And she worries that her son gets the bigger part of her information on how to interact with social media girls. “It’s really twisted,” she says. “They don’t know how to behave around each other.”

She asks her son the question: “If you don’t know how to talk to girls when you feel awkward, if you are like” Erg, I don’t know how to dress “, where do you go for help?”

“Online,” Ben says.

“So he goes in a full circle,” his mother says. “That’s where they get information.”

Ben is not embarrassed to have “used a chat for about two years” to get this type of advice. “Or the Ticktock,” he adds.

Sophie says Ben has learned the most about friendship with opposite sex while attending a cousin house attending a mixed school and has friends.

She remembers that Ben’s cousin reproached him after Ben asked if the cousin was attracted to a girlfriend.

“I don’t remember he’s annoyed with me, but well,” Ben says.

They discuss their different memories of events until they land on a version where they can agree: “His cousin was like,” No, this is my friend. I don’t think of them that way, “Sophie says.

“It was really opening the eyes to him,” she says. Turning to Ben, she remembers, “You came back from him and you were like:” It’s very better (my cousin), girls and boys are friends. “

Netflix’s drama reveals that Jamie Katie’s victim was subjected to misogynistic harassment after the male classmate shared her intimate images on her without her consent.

Jamie’s discussion about this incident with a child psychologist, played by Erin Doherty, is the main one for the applauded third episode of the program.

Ben has seen this kind of abuse of confidence and among his peers. “There is a man here and (a photo of) his genitals leaked into a massive group chat with many people,” he says. “It was a big thing about the Ticktock.”

The series begins with an episode where police interrogates Jamie about the sexualized images of elderly women he shared on his Instagram page, hinting at the ease with which young teenagers can access pornography.

This feels familiar to Ben, who thinks porn is the “most big problem” among his group of peers. He knows guys who are “addicted” to him: “They rely on it. There are people in my year who will have such a bad day unless they look at it.”

Ben curves a little by talking about pornography staring at the wall or attaching to his phone.

It seems more comfortable to talk about other content forms that young people meet online.

He estimates that the “one of 10” videos watching on his phone contain suffering materials, including scenes of extremely violence. And Ben’s parents are not subject to any illusions that their son is “safe” just because he is up on his computer – unlike Jamie’s parents in the show.

For Martin and Sophie, the decision lies in providing better opportunities for children to “participate” in society and to build their confidence.

They also say that they also want their son to have a “wide range” of male imitation models to learn from. Ben, who has stopped checking his phone several times in the course of his discussion, is again committed to the conversation.

He is lively in his praise for his sports coaches, whose “really strong morality” admires.

The parents nod, apparently pleased with his enthusiasm. They say they pack their son’s life with activities in an attempt to download him from his phone. But this is expensive, they say, and puts the more poor students in a disadvantage.

Sophie says of the main character of the show, Jamie: “He has no sport. He doesn’t feel well in himself. His father looks aside when he fails.”

Adolescence shows that children with limited opportunities to build their self-esteem are more “vulnerable” to the predatory messages of misogynistic influences, says Sophie.

Both parents agree with technology companies, government, schools and families are responsible for offering young people a convincing alternative to the siren call of the Mannonfer.

They insist that parents cannot do it themselves. As Sophie says, “This is a tsunami and someone gave me an umbrella.”

Ben believes that what is happening online is too often fired by adults as no matter to the real world. He thinks this is a mistake; Social media must be treated “like real life – because it is a real life,” he says.

*All names in this article have changed.