Watching Adolescence felt like getting hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. It wasn’t just another crime drama. It was something else entirely—something raw, something urgent, something that made me sit there after the final episode, staring at the screen, wondering what the hell just happened.
It starts with a knock at the door. No, not a knock—a battering ram. Armed police swarm into a quiet suburban home, shouting, grabbing, yanking a 13-year-old boy out of his bed. His parents are still in their pajamas, frozen in shock. His name is Jamie Miller. He has no shoes on. He looks stunned, blank-faced, like he barely understands what’s happening. Then we hear the words that change everything. He’s been arrested for murder.
That moment, that opening scene, sets the tone for everything that follows. Adolescence doesn’t hold your hand. It doesn’t soften the blow. It makes you sit there and feel it—the fear, the confusion, the disbelief. It makes you ask the questions that come rushing in: How could this happen? How does a kid—barely a teenager—commit such an act? And what led him there?
The Internet Raised Him
I kept coming back to one thing as I watched: Jamie’s room.
It’s just a regular teenage boy’s room—messy bed, posters on the wall, gaming console in the corner. But as the story unfolds, we realize that this room wasn’t just where he slept. It was where he was raised. Not by his parents, not by his teachers, but by the internet.
Jamie had been watching hours of online content—videos, forums, influencers preaching about power, about control, about how the world was rigged against him. At one point, a detective mutters something about “Andrew Tate shite,” and just like that, it clicks. This wasn’t just a random act of violence. This was learned behaviour.
His parents had no idea. And why would they? He wasn’t out drinking, doing drugs, or getting into trouble. He was in his room. Quiet. Safe. At least, that’s what they thought.
But the internet is its own kind of wild, lawless place. It doesn’t come with the same warning signs that parents know how to look for. There are no bruises, no slurred speech, no secret stashes. Just an algorithm, feeding a kid more and more of the same poison, until he starts to believe it’s the only truth that exists.
The Free Speech Trap
The most uncomfortable thing about Adolescence—and maybe the most important—is how it forces us to reckon with what free speech really means in today’s world.
I believe in free speech. I always have. I believe in open debate, in the marketplace of ideas, in letting people say what they think—even if I don’t like it. But watching this, I kept asking myself: Where’s the line?
Jamie’s crime didn’t come out of nowhere. He was radicalized. That’s a heavy word, but there’s no other way to put it. He didn’t wake up one day and decide to become violent. He was led there, breadcrumb by breadcrumb, by voices that told him his anger was justified, that his victim deserved it, that this was how he could take control.
And those voices? They weren’t hidden in some dark corner of the internet. They were everywhere. On YouTube, on TikTok, on forums where boys like Jamie gather and feed off each other’s rage.
So what do we do? Shut them all down? Regulate the internet? That’s the debate happening in the UK right now—how much control the government should have over online content. And honestly? I don’t know the answer. Because I don’t want a world where free speech is decided by whoever’s in power. But I also don’t want a world where a 13-year-old can be groomed into believing that killing someone is a righteous act.
That’s the trap. And Adolescence doesn’t give us a way out. It just makes sure we see the mess we’re already in.
What Even Is Truth Anymore?
One of the things that stuck with me the most was how Adolescence plays with the idea of truth—how it’s not as solid as we like to think it is.
Jamie’s truth, the one he was fed online, was that he was a victim, that the world was against him, that violence was the answer. His parents’ truth was that he was just a quiet, good kid who would never hurt anyone. The court’s truth was that he was a murderer.
And then there’s our truth, as viewers. The one that keeps shifting with every new piece of the puzzle.
Truth isn’t always about facts. Sometimes it’s about perspective. It’s about who gets to tell the story, who gets to decide which parts matter. And in a world where social media shapes what we believe faster than we can even process, that’s a terrifying thought.
Because the same way Jamie was pulled into one version of reality, so are we. Every day. We don’t think about it, but we’re all being fed our own carefully curated versions of the world—through the news we read, the posts we see, the voices we listen to. And if we’re not careful, we end up just as trapped in our own echo chambers as he was.
The Part That Broke Me
For all the big themes and political questions, the thing that hit me the hardest was something much smaller: Jamie’s mum, sitting in his empty room, staring at his computer screen, trying to make sense of what happened.
That’s what this really is—a story about a family that had no idea they were losing their son until it was too late.
And that’s what scares me the most. How easy it is. How invisible it is. How a kid can be radicalized without ever leaving his bedroom.
I don’t think Adolescence was made to give us answers. It was made to shake us awake. To make us ask better questions. To stop pretending that words don’t have consequences, that what kids see and hear online doesn’t matter. Because it does.
And if we don’t figure out what to do about it soon, Jamie won’t be the last, regardless of the colour of his skin or his country of origin.
