Adolescence and influence – beyond Netflix.

Adolescence and influence – beyond Netflix.

It’s not all about smartphones – or social media – and it’s not only about boys. It’s about all of us.

Since the release of Stephen Graham’s powerful drama on Netflix, there has been a sharper spotlight on the ways the lives of young people are influenced – especially by social media.

The heaviness of seeing this terrible story unfold, and the powerlessness of the community, the school, the police, and the parents is potent. As with many cases of youth violence, the question as to ‘why’ is not answered conclusively. It can only be partially answered.

We make connections and we can trace patterns – for instance in the online behaviour of Brianna Ghey’s murderers.  Axel Rudakubana’s journey towards the murder of innocent young girls in Stockport was one that could in part have been foreseen and was indeed flagged – but could not be fitted neatly into the ‘Prevent’ boxes or have precipitated any more decisive interventions.

We can understand that a young person might live in an echo chamber where narratives of hate and persecution/entitlement become increasingly loud and influential in their consciousness. That alone does not give a full sense of how evil can thrive in the mind, the heart, and then become consummate in the actions by those who become so consumed by it that they prepare to wound, maim, or kill. Especially when they are children and even teenagers.

One of the best analyses of ‘evil states of mind’ was delivered in last year’s Reith Lectures. If you haven’t listened to Dr Gwen Adshead’s speeches that seek to answer ‘Four Questions About Violence’, I fully recommend that you do. She is a forensic psychiatrist who works with violent perpetrators in secure psychiatric units and prisons.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b00729d9?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Dr Adshead works with adult offenders, and has 40 years experience of delivering therapeutic interventions with those found guilty of some of the most shocking and violent crimes. Nonetheless what she says about the genesis of evil states of mind is nonetheless important and relevant to understanding how children and teens may be swept along by the momentum of enabling factors.

One metaphor she uses is that of a safe, a series of locks or combinations that need to be found which once opened, disinhibit our more natural restraints against violence or violent reactions. She is careful not to talk about people who are evil – rather referring to ‘evil states of mind’. She identifies a series of common features of disinhibition of the cultural norms and taboos surrounding violence towards others:

• Internal narratives that create enemies / adversarial positions
• A sense of persecution, attributing ill-intent to others
• ‘Othering’ people -especially in ways that de-humanise
• A sense of entitlement, against a context where you are unsupported and forced to take action on your own part
• Self-righteous anger that can easily transfer into rage.
• Context and social norms – which may be societally sanctioned and real (for example the completely different laws concerning the treatment of fellow humans in concentration camps) – or may become the norm in online- or real life discourse. Here we’re talking about real gangs or gang-like states of mind.

Pundits and parents on many sides of the fence surrounding smartphone access, gaming, adolescent mental health, are weighing in to the debate (re-)ignited by Stephen Graham’s Adolescence.

It’s certainly added even further strength to Jonathan Haidt’s argument in his book ‘The Anxious Generation’ – that the introduction of smartphones and the persuasive design of apps and games is damaging in the sheer scale of influence in the lives of young people as they grow.

Undoubtedly it will embolden school leaders further to take a stand on the use of phones on-site in school. I am sure as result of the series, more parents will find the strength to say no and stand up for their values against their children’s arguments about what permissions ‘everyone’ and ‘no-one’ else has.

I know – both as an educator and a speaker working with parent groups, that over the past 10-15 years it has been harder and harder for parents to feel confident in their authority and setting boundaries or limiting freedoms where technology is concerned.

The drive to belong, and to answer the central questions of adolescence ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Am I loved?’ ‘Do I matter?’ is something that we cannot allow to be answered by distant and disparate voices.

It’s really important as a society, we take this conversation far beyond that of the smartphone. Like Dr Adshead’s forensic analysis of the different component parts that either restrain or unleash the potential for evil that we all have, this is only one part of the picture.

Think very carefully. As parents, we are meant to have the largest influence over our children – over their time living with us, we have hundreds of thousands of conversations. The patterning of those conversations, our approach to life, the values that we live out in our relationships with our children have the capacity to shape who they are in quite a significant way -for good or ill.

Children look to the adults, and the influences in their lives for a steer on how to be. Now their attention is divided. How many times do they pick up a phone, and engage with whatever’s out there? More or less than with us as their parents? It’s the variety and patterning of those messages that creates meaning. However, what they get from the various algorithms in response is a commercialised wild west – where the only real value is maintaining and sustaining their eye-time.

We need to take a bolder look at how we strengthen and cultivate human goodness, resilience, connection in each other -and especially in the lives of our children.

At the same time that Adolescence has been released, and painted such a bleak picture of modern childhood and disconnection – from self, from family, from society – the rather wonderful Sir Gareth Southgate has delivered his contribution to the Richard Dimbleby Lecture series. Listening to it in the same weekend as watching Adolescence was as inspiring in equal measure to the starkness of the drama.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00293l5/the-richard-dimbleby-lecture-sir-gareth-southgate

In it, he reflects on connection, belief, and resilience as the most crucial aspects leading to his own growth as a player and a person, and that of the multiple young men and peers he has led and coached throughout his career in football.

As much as he speaks of the ills of social media, he speaks of the way in which connection and culture can create a much-needed sense of belief and meaning in the lives of young people. And this is vital for us to hold in mind. The quick fix of banning social media -were that to be possible- will not make up for the unmet needs in the lives of young people that propel them there and keep them there.

He shows how he transformed the England football team from being the ‘Golden Generation’ of the worlds’ most talented but disparate and collectively underachieving players – a team that played in an identity vacuum – to becoming a diverse yet inclusive group with a coherent sense of pride, purpose, and mission.

He speaks of the power of mentorship – the power of adults as an active presence in the lives of young people. And how various coaches and mentors in his life helped him through the darkness of rejection and what must have felt like universal vilification in the face of his famed lost penalty in the Euro 96 semi-final against Germany.

His talk beautifully and movingly outlines his sense of the threat to youth and the outsourcing of mentoring to marketers ‘who do not have their best interests at heart.’ He speaks of the modelling of compassionate understanding, recognition, and belonging in the real-life experiences of children as having such an important impact.

I have worked with children and teens of both genders at all ends of the spectrum – upstanding, inspirational and caring, as well as struggling, scorning, and disaffected. Feeling seen and heard as people is something they all crave and has the catalytic capacity to propel them to be their truer selves as opposed to their armoured selves.

We can take the phones away. But we need to ensure that the ‘drug-store lovin’’ that they and we all get from the scroll is replaced by more nutritious connection. A sense of identity and belonging. At home, and at school.

In family life, we need to stop colluding in the myth that come adolescence, it’s fine and natural for our kids to separate from parents and family life. Granted – we have to navigate more independence for them and with them. But we need to ensure that they know in their bones that they belong, and that they matter – to us – and that their impact counts. It is our job – above all else – to stay connected even if they are pushing us away. We just need to be more ingenious, determined and collaborative- what worked when they were 5, 8, 10 won’t necessarily cut it at 13, 15 etc…

It is incredibly easy for teens to slip into relationships with their parents that are functional rather than fulfilling in their homelives. We need to adapt, surprise, and court them as well as provide leadership and direction. In fact the latter is only truly possible if our relationship with them is something they care about.

As a working parent myself, it’s hard to ensure that in the fringes of the working day, I’m doing a good job of all the multi-tasking that’s required of us. It’s actually really really hard to keep our eyes on the prize of ensuring our relationship with our teens is one of quality, especially when time is in short supply.

Our attention is regularly hijacked by ‘shoulds’ – imperatives external to the reality of family life and the needs of the child in front of us. Parents of teens are constantly bombarded by performance data once children are in the realm of public exams. Well-meaning schools want to promote parent involvement with their child’s education because the stats show it helps. But in practice this can quite often mean a certain outsourcing of their education.

We’re spending more time chasing homework, grades, and CV building structured activities, than we are being present for the child we have in front of us. Recognising and championing their unique individuality, tending to their inner lives, and stoking their sense of their own identity, purpose, meaning, and the gold dust that comes with all those things: their intrinsic motivation.

As Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate write in ‘Hold Onto Your Kids’ – social media is addictive because it commercially exploits the drive for reassurance of our attachment status: Do I matter? Am I loved?

One question we may be spurred to ask ourselves more productively than collectively railing against the wrongs of phones and social media, is about the quality of our culture and relationships in our homes. Where we feel unsettled by a sense of separate spheres – whereby we really don’t have a sufficient sense of how and where we express community and love with out teens…and discomfort that they are on the phones or devices to the detriment of being present in real life then these are top messages from Neufeld and Mate when it comes to separation, peer orientation, and screens…

• We may need to win our children back first.
• We are not able to nurture them (with our values and guidance) unless they are feeding at our table.
• If our children’s world has become their peers, then texting will be their preoccupation and TikTok/ snapchat/ social media will be where they live.
• It is never too late to address the underlying peer orientation that drives it. This is a relationship matter and any headway in this arena will reduce the corresponding compulsive drive for social connection outside the family home.
• If the child shows obsessiveness or sneakiness, it is imperative to back off trying to control him or her.
• Such signs demonstrate that the entertainment or video games or digital connections are serving a function in a child’s life that they should not be.
• Such a child needs our help, not more distressing interaction.
• We should not overtly challenge a child already addicted by trying to control the behaviour.
• There is no solution for the digital threat outside our relationship with our kids—attempts to control, prohibit, or deprive access will all fail in the absence of what we have called “relationship power.”

This advice seems right and relevant now that we are activated by the drama, the media debate, and the confirmation of things we feel are instinctively right in our hearts and our homes.

Young men may be statistically more inclined to wield knives -and of course that is a major, major concern. I am not underplaying that in the slightest. But on a more mundane level, both boys and girls are prone to controlling and persecuting behaviour whose collective effect is akin to social murder.

This is something that is on the up. It is certainly facilitated by the online space. It is also something that is very much a part of the picture when it comes to girls. In my work training pastoral leads, we’re seeing an ingrained harshness in peer-to-peer conflict -especially between girls. Grudges that should be worked through and dispensed with in mid adolescence, hang over into the sixth form. The origin of the conflict is often immaterial and hard even to recall in its specifics. It’s just become a pattern, a way of being.

Over years, young people – girls and boys, are ignored and excluded. Maybe not so overtly as being completely blanked by all. But it’s hard for them to gain social traction. Rumours and gossip, labels that stick, mean that their social status is undermined. The black-sheep of the peer group, they are othered.

In a fearful place of competition, comparison, and status-driven groupings, they serve a social purpose. Someone lower in the pecking order – who at least you are not. Someone on whom you are able to take your aggression out on in micro-ways. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

At the same time, those higher up the social pyramid, may be consolidating their sense of status, and sense of personal power. They may be offloading their aggression, and expelling darker material from their inner world by taking others down or playing power games. But they are not developing healthy relationships or secure attachments.

The fear of vulnerability and ability to make mistakes is not something these children are able to acknowledge, let alone live with. That you have to ‘prove yourself’ worthy in order to get recognition. The certainty of their rightness and intolerance of any wrongness is a tell-tale sign. Hence often the disconnect between the truth of how they act towards others and the reality, unless their deeds are caught on camera.

Those in leadership positions in schools are lost in games of ‘relationship Poirot’ trying to prove the unprovable…To parents who refuse to allow their child to be labelled unfairly unless there is a forensic and unattainable proof. And sometimes even when that is presented, their response is to weaponize their position rather than encounter the notion that something might be amiss, and needing careful leadership from the adults in the room, not legal defense.

We still need to work better and harder to challenge gang-like states of mind that emerge in adolescence, and the systemic unkindness in some peer dynamics that many will encounter at some stage in ways big and small through their time in education.

These behaviours may not be entirely new. With some shame, I can look back on my teen-dom in the ‘80s and remember how the designated ‘weirdo’s’ were treated in my school. Whilst I didn’t join in with that, I spent a lot more time looking away, than I did standing against what I could also see was rampantly unfair.

Right now, labelling, sharing jokes, ‘piling on’ can take a life of its own online all of which accelerate, intensify and enlarge the ritual shaming of anyone who doesn’t fit the bill.

Schools are hampered by an overstuffed curriculum at every key stage – and so the work on wellbeing, culture, and belonging is often squeezed into the margins, streamlined and systematized so that it can lack authenticity especially to the ready cynicism of teenagers, and to those who are peer oriented and who have found their belonging elsewhere online.

Good relationships are not just nice to have. They are essential to our health and our flourishing. And we need to invest more in teaching greater relational skill, understanding of what healthy relationships are and why healthy relationships matter, and conflict resolution skills. Especially when we see volatility, individualism, and aggression rule the day in the media and politics every day.

Having industrialised education, where we have the vulnerable stage of adolescence being managed at unprecedented scale, we have to think about where and how in a world of diversity and talent, we create a culture that really catalyses the capacity for humanity. Kindness, understanding, integrity, respect. In schools, in classes, in clubs. In corridors, in busy lunch-halls.

Where the upward spiral of recognising each other, lifting each other up, where everyone is acknowledged, known, and respected is something that is the norm – as opposed to labelling, denigrating, degrading, othering, ‘beating’.

We’ve had the digital revolution – and that’s been good and bad in parts. Certainly on the mental health front, the just is out. We’re on the cusp of an AI revolution. Change has never been so fast, and at the same time, it will never be so slow. The human skills of connection, and the ability to create and sustain connection, are in shorter and shorter supply when they are in greater and greater demand.

Some interesting questions to explore with the children in your lives – personally and professionally.

1. Where do you feel the greatest sense of belonging?
2. What does that feel like? What does it mean to you?
3. Which subjects, which activities give you a sense of belonging? Why and where does that come from?
4. Which groups are you part of – or do you look to – that give you a sense of belonging and pride? Why is that? What values drive that sense of pride?
5. Are there any teachers or mentor figures in your life who you trust? Who are they – where do you encounter them – in direct experience?
6. Where do you find belonging online? How does that work?
7. Who are your role models- who influences you in the online space? What’s that like – and how is that similar or different to people who are role models for you in real life?
8. Does everyone have the right to belong? Why / why not?
9. Which people in your life give you a sense of mattering – that what you do, and who you are is of notice? Family? Teachers? Peers? How do they do that?
10. How do you help other people feel that they belong?

I wonder what has resonated with you in reading this, and perhaps in response to the impact the Netflix drama, Adolescence has had on you? Are you reading as a parent? Or as an educator?

Do get in touch if you think I can help you and your family, or you and your school take further steps and effective action. It’s an emotional watch. Emotions are designed both to stir us up, and to spur us to take effective and appropriate action. Adolescence is a fraught process of transformation. Perhaps more fraught now than for previous generations.

Onwards…in hope.