Just over a year ago, Tender and Netflix hosted a special screening of episode one of Adolescence – a four-part series about 13-year-old Jamie Miller, arrested for the murder of his female classmate, Katie. As a Youth Board member, I had the great opportunity to attend.

The show is unflinching in its portrayal of how young boys are groomed with harmful online content, leading to violence against women and girls – issues that Tender strives to prevent through their healthy relationships programmes in schools.

As we settled in our seats, amongst colleagues from the domestic violence and knife crime sectors, as well as creatives behind the show, the lights cut out and we were plunged into an unrelenting hour of Jamie’s initial arrest. Shot all in one-take, writer and co-creator Jack Thorne explained afterwards in the Q&A: each episode is like a breath-hold, anchoring the audience to this unbearably stressful, and yet totally plausible, situation.

Episode one is the first breath-hold in the case’s timeline – the others follow the detectives’ visit to Jamie’s school, his session with a psychologist and finally, the aftermath for his family. What slowly unravels is a young boy radicalised into violence without anyone having noticed.

Tender’s role

After the screening, I felt raw, overwhelmed and, honestly, defeated. I was confronted with what felt like an impossible mountain – the dangerous misogynistic attitudes that seem increasingly hard to challenge as labyrinths of social media content flood young minds in ways that parents and schools can’t keep up with.

Since then, Adolescence has exploded into our lives – its unabashed portrayal of toxic online spaces continues to spark national conversation and earn it countless awards. At the same time, the show also faces strong backlash on social media with many reactions to Adolescence reflecting the very issues it highlights.

With a background in film myself, I loved how in the Q&A, Jack Thorne described TV as ‘an empathy box’. It spoke to the power of storytelling to shift us towards urgency on an issue. Adolescence has done an incredible job of raising the issue but, with Tender’s support, the minds behind the show recognised that acknowledgement alone is not enough. This particular issue needed an extra step to move audiences beyond concern to action and engagement.

Tender has played a vital role in extending conversations into classrooms and homes, partnering with Netflix to produce guides and resources for teachers, parents and carers. These guides help adults navigate the themes explored in the series, demystify the manosphere and offer practical ways to challenge harmful messaging before it escalates.

Unfortunately, lately the issue is more urgent than ever, with misogynistic attitudes accelerating at an alarming rate in young boys and men and an ‘epidemic of violence against women and girls’ occurring across the UK.

So, a year on, how can Adolescence still help us?

The rift

During the post-screening Q&A, co-creators and writers Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham alongside producer Jo Johnson emphasised the disconnect between the world children navigate online and how little adults understand it.

Graham recalled how simply watching a few fitness videos led to Andrew Tate-like content popping up on his own feed. As a 50-year-old man he could recognise the inherently sexist messaging and treat it critically – but how can a 13-year-old, without the right tools, do the same?

Thorne spoke about the manosphere, a word I was hearing for the first time, and how Andrew Tate is used as a touchstone name for adults in the show, but really, he is just the tip of the iceberg. There are far more dangerous voices shaping young minds. Incel rhetoric, he explained, thrives on a twisted logic – it gives those who feel abnormal the steps to feel normal, but in the most dangerous and toxic ways.

Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere documentary has shown the extreme depths of these misogynistic online spaces and forced the issue into the limelight, but failed to interrogate how young boys and men find themselves tied up in this content and ideas. To tackle the issue, we need to understand why young people are turning to these harmful role models and the role algorithms in pushing this content.

It takes a village

Graham, drawing from his experience as a parent, shared how Jamie’s home life was intentionally written as non-abusive,  to not distract from the main issue – how dangerous attitudes can grow in school and online, undetected. Crucially, it wasn’t what the parents did, but what they missed.

This led Libby from our Youth Board to pose the question – if we rewound a year, how could Katie’s murder have been prevented?

Reminiscent of the famous saying ‘it takes a village’, Thorne stressed that 10-15 people surround every child who can change their life. Parents, family members, guardians, teachers, friends – it’s up to all of us. Communication with that child is vital. The smaller conversations are just as important as the big ones. Spotting a subtle shift in behaviour, listening without judgment, and challenging harmful jokes or attitudes before they escalate – these moments add up.

An impossible mountain

I remember a year ago the impossible mountain feeling that was slightly comforted by the allyship and positive reactions from those at the screening soon returned, and has resurfaced many times since, as I went online and gauged the more negative responses to Adolescence.

In some corners of the internet, Adolescence has been received as an attack, rather than a call to protect young people. Comments dismiss the show as a demonising depiction of young boys or an exaggeration of the issue. While demoralising, the defensiveness the show’s been met with is crucial in finding answers to move forward.

When issues like violence against women and girls arise, the instinct to deflect can kick in. It feels easier to push the blame onto somebody else than to accept the scale of the problem, and our complicity in it. Instead, I think to acknowledge our part in issues like violence against women and the potential to transform our role, is much braver, positive and cool.

At the heart of Tender’s work around Adolescence is creating a space for young people to talk openly about relationships, masculinity, identity and online influences without fear of judgement, and providing the tools to think critically about the content they consume online and attitudes they encounter in real life.

How do we continue to move forward?

If Adolescence showed us anything, it is that silence, distance and misunderstanding leave dangerous gaps. A year later, I think the most important sentiment still remains – that we need to create environments where we can listen to each other.

We need to keep asking ourselves, what reactions are we seeing to the conversation about violence against women and girls and the struggles young men are facing too? Why do some people feel attacked or unsupported? And most importantly, how do we shift these conversations from a place where people feel defensive and isolated, to openness, understanding and accountability?

Find out more about Tender’s collaboration with Adolescence.