I warned Tech Company leaders in 2003 this would happen and they refused to act - the consequences came into my own home
My friend Kate said it like this: “Adolescence is a brilliant drama, the actors utterly compelling, the one-take cinematography extraordinary. It is mind blowing in the way that it boils down the intensity which the subject of online radicalisation of boys into misogyny really deserves.”
The Adolescence series has been watched by millions, topping charts and receiving “universal acclaim”. It was filmed in my hometown, South Elmsall, so it immediately felt personal, as I watched the depiction of a police raid taking place in a street I walked through every day as a girl. Episode two was shot around my high school, in places I last hung out as a teenager. The bigger impact of Adolescence for me though, is the way it brings to life deep concerns I held as a professional in 2003; concerns I formally raised with people with the power to do something, and they all chose to look away.
My first professional job, when I left science for work in the community and voluntary sector, was with Business in the Community. There’s so much bullshit spouted in the name of “corporate social responsibility” and I still saw good people try to make a difference. Invited as a critical friend into the inner sanctum of a corporate responsibility retreat held by BT, the senior manager said to the group, “I love this company, I feel like I can be my true self here and say what I think”. In my presentation, I said: “Here is the evidence of your wholesale tax dodging. How can you pretend to care about inclusion and then participate in such inequality-creating corruption?” In the coffee break, the same senior manager took me quietly to one side and said: “Thank you so much for saying what you did — there’s no way I could have done that”.
At Business in the Community, after helping the community sector to access IT business volunteers, I was promoted to a Director level, supporting a team of business leaders from AOL, BT, Cisco Systems, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle. Such “leadership teams” were designed to facilitate business networking and the production of case studies of “good things they had done”- to boost staff' pride (good for retention and recruitment), their brand value and ultimately their profits. I brought a paper to this IT Sector Leadership Team (Comm.unity) in 2003 that said:
Technology is spreading and accelerating in use, in significant part because it provides access to pornography - you are profiting vastly because of this
This easy access to pornography is going to shape whole generations and lead to terrible problems for which you will have responsibility. (I quoted the Suns agony aunt - who said she was noticing a shift in teenagers from asking her about whether to have sex yet or what contraception to use, to questions about group and anal sex)
IT corporations should own and act on this responsibility. I used the analogy of the Portman Group in the drinks industry that took some degree of responsibility for alcoholism. I suggested “Ask Frank” for drugs was a model to copy- a version for teenagers about sex, porn, technology
These leaders declined taking matters further. One, from Microsoft said “I do see what you mean but we won’t be doing anything about it.”. I wrote to Margaret Hodge, the first Children’s Minister in Blair's Government, I saw no resulting action. So when Keir Starmer describes this as an “emerging and growing problem” I feel very angry. This was coming for years.
Numerous disastrous problems have emerged, including porn induced erectile dysfunction, the normalisation of sexual violence shaping children’s understanding of sex and relationships, algorythm and dopamine driven pipelines to paedophilia. The impacts are playing out everyday, in every school in the UK, including my sons. Things came to a head three years ago, when I was called to school, to find my 14 year old with cuts and a badly swollen face. We had to take him to A and E.
The doctor was shown the video of him being beaten up, circulated on Whatsapp. A former friend of my sons had grabbed him in a neck lock, punched him and spat on him, after being cheered on by a group of adolescent boys. The doctor's assessment was that this type of neck-hold beating could have killed him, the brain being forced to rattle in the skull. The backstory was that my son had stood up for a young woman who accused the former friend of rape, and who was ostracised for making the claim. My son was present moments after the incident, when the former friend said to him “I feel a bit guilty about that but she did consent two weeks ago.” The young man was arrested for both the alleged rape and the assault. The CPS chose not to prosecute and restorative justice was offered, accepted by my son, but the service never followed up properly. I’m extremely proud of my son’s integrity. He paid a price for it over some years and I witnessed the manifestation of corporate irresponsibility inside my own home.
The Netflix drama, Adolescence, has made these decade long issues unavoidable, at least for a short time, as the attention is focussed. Keir Starmer warned there was not a "silver bullet response" or "some policy lever that can be pulled" and said "It's a cultural issue, and therefore we're going to have to look more broadly, work as a society on this, and discuss it, which is why I'm really pleased that Adolescence is now going to be shown in schools free because I do think young people should be watching it."
And there you have it again. Adults with power who can’t work out what the real problem is, because they refuse to look at the wider system that is enabling this. The best solution they can think of is to load more burden onto our young ones, already suffering with growing levels of mental health problems, linked of course, in part, to technology use.
We don’t live in a culture, we live in the disease of capitalist, colonialist, modernity an extractive, anti-life system. Nothing is sacred, almost anything goes, including destroying our climate system and despoiling our water, if a profit is to be made. Our children's minds, bodies, their future, can be thrown in the bin, if it makes some people wealthy. Those with money and power get more money and power. And this extraction is built on separation, feeds off shame and is kept in place by loneliness. The manosphere promotes toxic, fascistic, misogynistic, nature hating outlets. What does it mean to be a man in a patriarchal culture, where the essential goodness of men is questioned and the value of a man is associated with a limited set of achievements and abilities? Patriarchy is damaging to all sexes and genders, including men.
How are we holding in our culture, those tender years of transition into adulthood? What is being allowed into our spaces, that we wouldn't dream of letting in, if it turned up, like the monster that it is, visibly on our doorsteps? Piped into our homes through BT’s internet, down Cisco's pipes, on Intel chips, with Microsoft gaming and backed up into Oracle’s clouds. Instead of setting a precedent for responsibility, so needed by the social media companies to come, these companies turned a blind eye.
A healthy, regenerative culture would see this cultural disease, name it and promote counter mechanisms to cultivate a collective wellness. It would see off attempts to dominate and control, with both love and firmness. A healthy culture would support rites and initiations for our young ones. It would act to prevent harm, to repair damage, to restitute and restore. A healthy culture would offer a life of dignity and purpose, a life where young people might expect to have their own family one day, who they can readily feed and house, for the continuation of life.
Instead our young ones are facing a collapsing “civilisation”, where food systems will fail, chaos and fascism will continue to rise, and confusion will be pushed in the wake. Elon Musk, now arch tech bro fascist, promoted a conspiracy theory on X, that Adolescence was "anti-white propaganda" whilst evoking last summer's white supremacy riots.
Our “civilisations” repulsive core is being revealed. It is time to discern where we place our energies, how much we are willing to be co-opted and silenced. We are being called to create life affirming, regenerative cultures. We can’t do this alone. In the words of my friend Skeena Rathor Kashmiri, this is about co liberation, about finding together our safety, belonging, freedom and power. This starts in our communities, where my life force is now focussed. A mass of energy is needed for this, which can only come from our younger ones, supported by healthy eldership. Amongst our young ones are those who can co-create a regenerative and reparatory vision; who can build in the ruins, something beautiful.
So I don’t share a perspective of despair, despite all the horrors we are witnessing and what we know is surely coming. Because ultimately I know this civilisation is disgusting and it needs to go. I wish for it to die with the least impacts possible. I wish for us to focus on building the new in its ashes.
I feel this with love and longing for our young ones, for future generations, for all of life