Netflix’s “Adolescence” Exposes the Digital Crisis Reshaping Youth and Justice

In the first few minutes of Netflix’s hit show Adolescence, police swarm a quiet suburban home. Rifles drawn, they break down the door and force the family onto the floor at gunpoint. Upstairs, they drag 13-year-old Jamie Miller out of bed and arrest him for murder.

What follows is a comprehensive depiction of the juvenile justice system—the police, the attorneys, and most importantly, the suspect and his family. The show challenges viewers to confront uncomfortable topics and abandon normal TV expectations. There is no mystery to solve, no surprise twist. We know who committed the crime, but we don’t know why: What could drive a seemingly ordinary kid to brutally stab a classmate to death?

Growing Up Inside the Internet

Though fictional, Adolescence reveals how systems meant to support and protect youth have failed to keep up with the digital realities they now face. Children today aren’t just growing up with the internet, they’re growing up inside of it. Recent surveys by the Pew Research Center show that 95 percent of teens have access to a smartphone, while 46 percent use the internet “almost constantly.” The majority use platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram daily. Smartphones and social media are central to how preteens and teens communicate, learn, entertain themselves, and form identities. Teens use a coded language of emojis and acronyms that is indecipherable to most adults.

This digital immersion has created what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls the “anxious generation,” the subject and title of his bestselling book. Both the book and the show chronicle an emerging public health crisis: The kids, it seems, are not all right. Teen depression and anxiety levels were relatively stable in the early 2000s up until 2012, when something abruptly changed. Since then, the numbers have gone in one direction: up. The crisis is particularly severe for teens in the juvenile justice system, who already have higher rates of depression and anxiety than the general population.

Haidt traces the rise in anxiety and depression to a fundamental shift in how children grow up, shaped more by algorithms than human interaction. Adolescence dramatizes this shift, showing how digital dependence warps self-image, relationships, and emotional development in ways our system isn’t equipped to handle or even recognize.

Notably, this rise in youth anxiety coincides with the rapid adoption of smartphones among teenagers and the growing popularity of platforms like Instagram. The Anxious Generation connects the deterioration in teen mental health to social media, noting that the suicide rate for young girls has risen 131 percent since the invention of the “Like” button. Although Haidt has been criticized for failing to make a causal link between screen time and mental health, the book raises important questions about the unintended consequences of social media in teens’ lives.

Social Media and the Adolescent Brain

Adolescent brains undergo major transformations during puberty. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making, executive function, and impulse control, is developing at a rapid pace. Infinite scrolling apps hijack that circuitry, activating the same neurochemical rewards a slot machine does. This process rewires young brains, physically altering neural pathways to prioritize instant gratification.

The critically acclaimed third episode of Adolescence—a harrowing interview between the accused killer and a child psychologist—makes this pathology starkly clear. As the boy describes his online habits, he frames his sense of self-worth using the language of social media. His intense need for external validation is evident in his desperate pleas for his psychologist to “like” him, highlighting how online affirmation can distort identity and emotional development.

The U.S. Surgeon General warns that while social media offers certain benefits for youth, it also poses serious mental health risks. Even as leaked documents revealed Meta’s awareness of the harm Instagram has on young people, more teens are using the platform than ever before. Concerned about growing risks, lawmakers—many of them parents—aren’t waiting for conclusive research to intervene. In April, despite unresolved technical and legal issues, Utah became the first state to enact a controversial age-verification law. Other states have chosen to ban or restrict phone use in schools.

Crime and the Digital Age

The digital transformation of childhood isn’t just affecting mental health, it’s also changing the nature of juvenile crime and how society must respond to it. Yet our institutions—schools, courts, corrections—are stuck in the analog era, focused too much on meatspace and not enough on cyberspace.

Conflict between teens is now archived online, whether hidden in “direct messages” or publicly viewable. Unlike past arguments that faded with time, these digital disputes are preserved and revisited, often escalating emotional responses. More alarming is exposure to harmful online content, such as misogynistic “incel” forums and social media influencers like the Tate brothers—both referenced in the show—that distort social norms and normalize violence. This disconnect has serious consequences. The shift to screen-based adolescence has magnified the virality of violence, with online disputes increasingly spilling into the real world.

A scene in the second episode of Adolescence captures the generational divide perfectly. Mystified about the motive for the crime, one of the detectives enlists his teenage son to look at some suspicious social media posts. The boy is instantly able to crack the case for his father by deciphering a cryptic string of emojis. It’s a vivid lesson: Understanding the nature of juvenile delinquency today requires fluency in the language of the internet.

This generational disconnect doesn’t stop there. Once youth are in the system, tools like juvenile risk assessments still rely heavily on indicators like prior arrests or school attendance while ignoring visible red flags in public comment sections online. Similarly, mental health interventions continue to use diagnostic tools designed for an outdated model of childhood that didn’t include constant digital stimulation and social comparison.

These blind spots limit the system’s ability to respond effectively to the needs of today’s youth. Until juvenile justice professionals catch up, the effectiveness of prevention and intervention efforts will remain moderate at best. To better help children and address public safety, we must fundamentally recalibrate our approach. This means integrating digital literacy into investigations, updating intake procedures to account for online behavior patterns, and designing mental health interventions that address the unique psychological challenges of growing up inside the internet. It means training law enforcement, attorneys, and juvenile justice professionals to recognize how online dynamics drive both mental health crises and criminal behavior.

Policy is Downstream from Culture

Adolescence doesn’t linger on the crime itself, turning its attention to the fallout instead. As Jamie’s dad tucks his imprisoned son’s teddy bear into bed, he whispers, “Sorry, son, I should’ve done better.” His raw grief reminds us that the devastation wrought by crime extends far beyond the courtroom, disrupting families and entire communities. If our systems fail to evolve with the realities of modern adolescence, these tragedies won’t just continue—they’ll multiply.

The show exists as a post-mortem on a digital overdose, exposing an online world largely invisible to adults. While policymakers wait for conclusive evidence and debate effective solutions, the internet continues to shape children’s lives in unprecedented ways. The message is clear: We can’t effectively address juvenile crime or justice outcomes without a better understanding of the digital world that defines modern adolescence.