Adolescence vs Black Mirror: Two extremes of the same debate

From time to time a Netflix series unexpectedly becomes a complete phenomenon, as happened with "Queen's Gambit," "Squid Game," "Baby Reindeer," and this year with "Adolescence." The series' popularity was such that some governments even included it as part of the material teachers could use in their classes, and others rekindled the debate about teenagers' access to social media. And it has also generated great debate among people.

The two main themes addressed in the series are the "manosphere" and the problem of social media use by teenagers. Of which the second one particularly catches my attention, not because the problem of incel culture is not interesting, but because it really is a very old problem (misogyny) with new words. While the problem parents have about what technology to give their children, at what age, and how controlled it should be is something that didn't exist 20 years ago, and is now a huge issue in parenting.

Watching the debates on social media, I saw that most parents give their children a cell phone or their own computer (they're almost the same thing these days) with parental controls at age 12, so they can stay connected with them when they go to school alone and so they don't get left out of the social life that largely revolves around social media at that time.

I don't think it's bad, considering that it doesn't mean that before the age of 12 they don't use the internet at all, but rather that they use it on shared devices and/or game consoles. But in those debates, there were some parents who said they should use parental controls until they were 16, or not give their children a cell phone until they were 18, which quickly reminded me of the Black Mirror episode “Arkangel” (4x2).

This episode, directed by renowned actress Jodie Foster, told the story of an overprotective mother who injected a chip into her daughter Sara that allows her to know her location at all times, see what she sees (as if her eyes were cameras), and even censor her vision and hearing in real time. This last aspect prevents Sara from seeing, for example, a barking dog, violent news, blood, or her mother crying; and this also causes her to be bullied at school.

Sometime after a fit of rage in which the girl stabs herself repeatedly with a pencil, angry at not being able to see her blood, a therapist advises the mother to stop using censorship since it is not allowing her to develop properly because she is so isolated from “danger”. And when Sara leaves her house for the first time without the censorship activated, we can see how she has to face the fear caused by the dog, the violence in the school playground and her first exposure to porn and gore thanks to her friend, eager to introduce her to these two things.

Unfortunately, the episode doesn't explore any of the consequences of this exposure to the world's violence all at once, though we can infer that it must have been traumatic. Instead, we have a time jump with Sara now being 15 years old, where she starts secretly dating her friend, and her mother finds out and starts spying on her again through the chip.

Although the technology in the episode doesn't exist, the parallels with parental controls on cell phones and the measure some parents take to review their children's chats are clear. Obviously, as Adolescence clearly shows us, the internet is dangerous and one can encounter pornography, bullying, incel culture, violence, and more, such as harassment or online scams. But overprotectiveness can lead to a loss of trust between parents and children, or a sudden shock with reality, as happens to Sara when she is freed from the censorship of the Arkangel chip.

Where is the fine line that separates one thing from another? I don't know, I don't think there's any manual that can tell you where it is. It's also something that varies depending on the child, in “Adolescence” we see that Jamie received the same upbringing as his sister Lisa, and she's a seemingly normal person. I personally have had access to the internet and social media since I was 9 or 10 years old, because I always obeyed the rules and was quite mature, while my sister was controlled much more because she was always more rebellious, and none of us had any serious problems.

In short, I am glad that more attention is being paid to the dangers of uncontrolled early use of the Internet and networks, but I hope that parents know how to recognize what the healthy limit of control is. The internet can be dangerous, but it's also a great tool that allows us to access a wealth of information, connect with people who share our interests, develop our hobbies, etc. And it's already a part of society from which children can't be isolated, whether one likes it or not.