Within weeks of airing, “Adolescence” is already the 4th most popular English-language series of all time on Netflix (and the most-watched miniseries on the platform). “Adolescence” tells the harrowing story of 13-year-old Jamie Miller, who is arrested for fatally stabbing his classmate, Katie. Told through continuous real-time takes, the narrative unfolds across Jamie’s interrogation, the police investigation, and his psychiatric evaluation, gradually revealing his misogynistic anger, which is influenced by exposure to online “incel” content. Incels (involuntary celibates) are a misogynistic online subculture of men who form their identity around a perceived inability to form sexual or romantic relationships.

The show has had a big impact on public discussions of online misogynist content, the incel community, and the general condition of boys and young men. It has also reached into the highest ranks of political life, prompting a roundtable discussion between the show writers and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and government-backed plans to show the series in every secondary school in the UK.

Why has “Adolescence” made such a mark? The show’s extraordinary popularity can partly be explained through cultural attraction theory, which suggests that certain narratives achieve prominence because they match our cognitive preferences. Incel discourse involves sex-related content, evokes moralized disgust, exploits our negativity bias, and activates our tribal coalitional psychology by framing incels as a collective and agentic threat to women. This aligns with the theory that humans have evolved heightened sensitivity and protective responses toward threats to women. Men—stereotypically viewed as sexually assertive—openly identifying around their sexual exclusion creates a minimally counterintuitive, but memorable, violation of expected gender norms.

In short, stories about incels push our buttons.

Seven things “Adolescence” gets wrong

Nobody can deny that “Adolescence” is gripping. But that is not to say that it is realistic. There are many ways in which the story is unrepresentative of real trends, including the following seven:

1. The specific crime committed—a boy inspired by incel ideology killing a girl—is essentially unheard of. The writers say the show was inspired by an epidemic of knife violence in the UK. This is real, and a genuine challenge facing policymakers. But a teenage boy stabbing a teenage girl is thankfully a vanishingly rare occurrence in the UK. Just one in 20 knife crime victims are teenagers. Knife crime is largely an issue for adult men: only 13% of perpetrators and 9% of victims are women. Knife crime is also much more common among men of color than white men (Jamie is white). In short: white male adolescent offender and young female victim is by far the least common combination in knife crime.
2. Incel violence is also extremely rare. For context, there are approximately 20,000 active users of the largest incel forum (Incels.is), and approximately 59 people worldwide have been killed in ideologically motivated spree killings by incels. By contrast, the similarly sized (around 15,000 members) Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram has killed approximately 350,000 people since 2002. Government authorities are rightly concerned about risks of radicalization, but again, incels seem to be a very low-risk group on this front. In the UK, incels make up a relatively small proportion of Prevent (a government program aimed at identifying individuals at risk of radicalization) referrals: just 77 in total, or 1.2% of all referrals. Research consistently indicates most incels reject violence. One study showed that 80% of incels completely rejected violence, with low rates of approval of extremist acts such as Elliot Rodger’s infamous attack. Even in incel forums, research finds that only 1.39% of posts legitimize violence. When asked if violence against people perceived as causing harm to them is ever justified, our government-commissioned research found that approximately one-quarter of incels selected either “sometimes” or “often,” although those who selected “often” comprised just over 5%. The average response was situated between “never” and “rarely.” Incel endorsement of violence appears comparable to other nationally representative samples.
3. “Adolescence” places a disproportionate weight on online influences. By the end of the series, the blame for the murder leans toward social media and online incel content, with Jamie’s parents chastising themselves for not monitoring their son’s online activity more closely. Writer Jack Thorne has likened social media to “the new cigarettes.” This is a dubious claim given the contested nature of the evidence for the negative effects of social media. Thorne has suggested that consuming incel content could plausibly lead some young men toward what he sees as its logical conclusion of violence. He notes, “if you believe one part of the logic, the other half becomes conducive,” referring to the idea of manipulating or harming others in an attempt, as he puts it, to “reset a female-dominated world that works against you.” Although Thorne concedes that most boys could consume such content without becoming violent, the implication is that for some, the ideology creates a dangerous internal logic. But there is really no evidence to support this claim.
4. “Adolescence” mischaracterizes or overlooks some other crucial realities about incels, including notably high autism rates among incels—30% compared to just 1-3% of the general male population—and much higher rates of poor mental health with much higher risks of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicidal ideation. In our latest data, one in five incels contemplated suicide every day for the past two weeks, with a further 33% reporting they thought about it “more than half the days” or “several days.” For context, just 5% of people in the UK report having contemplated suicide within the last year. Jamie is presented as somewhat insecure, but he has friends, is doing well in school and has a stable and loving family.
5. “Adolescence” conflates distinct manosphere groups. For instance, a female detective dismisses the incel issue as “that Andrew Tate shite.” But this overlooks important ideological distinctions: “red-pill” content, like Tate’s, promotes traditional gender roles and sexual dominance, whereas “black-pill” incel ideology is rooted in fatalism, rejection, and perceived sexual worthlessness. Lumping them together erases these key differences and risks obscuring how and why young men engage with each worldview. To be fair to the writers, they may here have simply been reflecting the actual adult confusion around the topic, rather than their own. But as a result, the show fails to deepen the understanding of this online world among adult viewers.
6. The show implicitly overstates the popularity of manosphere content, especially among white boys and men. According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, only 15% of white men, 31% of Asian men, and 41% of Black men in the UK viewed Andrew Tate positively. Our research shows that incels are disproportionately from ethnic minorities.
7. The series also fuels an unfounded panic about secret incel emoji languages, an idea with no basis in evidence. Although there is a trolling lexicon of incel slang that may seem opaque to adults, the idea of hidden emoji codes appears entirely fabricated. This odd and unnecessary addition puts more distance between the actual subculture of online incels and the show’s portrayal. This is a small error, but an unforced one.

What “Adolescence” gets right

However, the show does accurately portray certain elements. Depictions of overworked teachers managing schools that function as badly-run prisons confirm some of my own personal experiences of working in UK schools. The lack of good male teachers as role models, often highlighted by AIBM President Richard Reeves, is also effectively depicted. (Ironically, “Adolescence” lampoons a burned-out male teacher for relying too heavily on showing films in class, yet the show itself is now being backed by the government to be shown in every UK school).

The series very effectively illustrates that the term incel now functions as an insult against boys and men, emphasizing increasing pressures on teenage males to appear sexually successful. This pressure now has a ripple effect on all boys, not just those who buy into incel ideology directly. “Adolescence” vividly depicts Jamie being bullied by his victim. She publicly labels him an incel on social media, and his humiliation intensifies as dozens of classmates “like” the comment, turning a single insult into collective ridicule. This online bullying of Jamie serves as a plausible trigger for his violence.

Our research finds that 86% of incels report experiences of bullying compared to 33% of the general population. Some online spaces, like the r/IncelTears subreddit, promote the ridicule of incels. The subreddit moderators have had to introduce a rule against encouraging incel suicide. It is important to note here that incels do overestimate societal hostility towards them.

“Adolescence” thus presents a somewhat plausible narrative of how a tragedy like this might unfold (even if, as noted earlier, it would be such an extreme statistical outlier as to be effectively novel). Rather than portraying Jamie as a cold-blooded psychopath, the show traces a more relatable trajectory: an insecure young boy feels pressure to appear sexually successful (a pressure likely amplified by the manosphere content he consumes), is publicly humiliated when branded an incel online (a plausible trigger for adolescent male violence), comes into possession of a knife, and finally confronts his bully, where things spiral out of control leading to him killing her.

Note to parents: Don’t panic

Naturally enough, “Adolescence” is causing concern among many parents. It effectively capitalizes on their anxieties about nefarious online influences pushing children toward extremism. However, parents should resist panicking unnecessarily. Although monitoring online content and encouraging real-life engagement is wise, most teenagers—even those occasionally angry, insecure, or heavily online—rarely become violent extremists. A teenage boy who murders a female classmate will almost always show clear signs of antisocial behavior—if not out-and-out psychopathy. The idea that parents may be unknowingly “raising a monster” is a natural fear, but extremely unlikely.

The politics of incel drama

The strengths and weaknesses of a TV show are not usually of much concern to scholars and policymakers. But “Adolescence” is different. It has not just hit a nerve as a drama, it has set alarm bells ringing in the corridors of power. Prime Minister Starmer has repeatedly referred to the drama as a “documentary,” despite the completely fictional nature of the show. Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch has faced public accusations of a “dereliction of duty” for not having watched it, possibly a first in British political history.

As mentioned earlier, there is a plan to show “Adolescence” in schools across the UK. This is a bad idea. A petition, which has currently been signed by over 1,800 professionals and parents, raises serious concerns about the plan, citing potential unintended harms, such as ethical and developmental risks of exposing children to the content, likely classroom disruption, and the absence of proper structure, guidance, or evaluation as an educational tool. It seems as likely to drive young men away from an open conversation than towards one. A starker concern is that the glamour and attention given to the topic may actually inadvertently inspire would-be spree killers who often “cruise for a cause” that will garner them most attention.

Policy decisions should be based on sober research, not guided by highly emotive dramatizations. This includes the kind of work our team undertook to conduct the largest study of incels in the word, at the behest of the UK government’s Commission for Countering Extremism, and which we published and presented to the Women and Equalities Committee in 2024.

As a scholar researching these issues, it is disconcerting to see politicians and journalists appealing to verisimilitude (the convincing appearance of truth) instead of actual evidence-based reality. I commend Jack Thorne for suggesting that the show should only serve to stimulate further dialogue. Further conversations and interventions must remain rooted firmly in empirical evidence rather than cultural virality alone. Policymakers need to commission additional rigorous research before adopting any new widespread educational initiatives or policies.

“Adolescence” is superb fiction, but fiction it is.

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William Costello

William Costello is a doctoral researcher of Individual Differences and Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, with a master’s in psychology, Culture, and Evolution from Brunel University London. He has published several empirical articles on the psychology of incels (involuntary celibates) in journals such as Personality and Individual Differences, the Journal of Sex Research, Evolutionary Psychological Sciences, Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, along with government research on behalf of the Commission for Countering Extremism.