Emmy for Adolescence a call for global rewiring

BRITISH mini-series Adolescence, which kickstarted a global debate about the corrosive impact of social media and misogynist influencers on teenage boys, has scooped six Emmys — television’s equivalent of the Oscars. At just 15, Owen Cooper, who plays a 13-year-old boy arrested for the brutal murder of a teenage girl, is the youngest-ever male Emmy winner in any acting category. The hit Netflix series shows the aftermath of the stabbing while exploring the online ‘manosphere’ — how time on the Internet shapes the boy next door into a radicalised, rageful teenager. Adolescence forces viewers to have a hard look at the unfiltered domination of social media. As boys just forming their sense of identity begin to internalise toxic ideas of what it means to be a man, the easy tools Internet provides can lead to normalisation of cultural misogyny. It’s scary, but all too real.