Dangerous Online Influences Could Harm Your Children, Actor Warns
By Movieguide® Contributor
Just how much do online influences impact your child?
Stephen Graham stars in the Netflix series ADOLESCENCE, which deals with the aftermath of a 13-year-old boy Jamie Miller accused of murdering a classmate. The actor draws parallels of influences on Jamie’s behavior to the ones affecting kids in real life.
Graham, who plays the accused’s father, Eddie, also served as co-writer for the series and wanted to explore the role the Internet and incel (involuntary celibate) culture has on the youth of today after hearing about two incidents where a young boy stabbed a girl.
“[I]f I’m really honest with you, [those stories] hurt my heart.” Graham told The Independent.
This led to him to create the story of Jamie, which poses the question, “What outside forces could drive someone who comes from a ‘normal family’ to kill?”
“Who is to blame? Who is accountable?” The answer is not straightforward. “Maybe we’re all accountable family, school, society, community, environment,” Graham said.
The series should serve as a wake-up call to parents to be aware of what is speaking into their children’s lives, he believes.
“It’s just being mindful of the fact that not only we parent our children, and not only the school educates our children,” the father-of-two said. “But also there’s influences that we have no idea of that are having profound effects on our young culture, profound effects, positive and extremely negative.”
READ MORE: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA INCREASES TEEN BULLYING AND HARMS MENTAL HEALTH
He homed in on children’s easy access to the Internet via mobile devices as one of those influences.
“When we were kids, if you got sent to your room or if Kenny Everett was on the telly, and it got a bit racy, you’d be sent to your room and then you couldn’t watch it,” he said. “But today even within the context of that home, when lads and girls go to their bedrooms, they have the world at their fingertips.”
There are links between violence and social media, recent studies suggests.
ProPublica cited that homicides rose 30% in 2020.
“Criminologists point to a confluence of factors, including the social disruptions caused by COVID‑19, the rise in gun sales early in the pandemic and the uproar following the murder of George Floyd, which, in many cities, led to diminished police activity and further erosion of trust in the police,” wrote Alec MacGillis.
But social media might have a factor in the uptick in violence.
“Violence prevention workers described feuds that started on Instagram, Snapchat and other platforms and erupted into real life with terrifying speed,” MacGillis added.
James Timpson, a violence prevention in Baltimore, said that usually disputes among youth involved only a few people pre-social media days nowadays erupt a hundred times over due to social media and mobile devices.
“Five hundred people know about it before you even leave school. And then you got this big war going on,” Timpson explained.
Finding an online community with similar struggles and ideologies can reinforce negative and even violent behaviors as well.
One extreme example is the case of Jake Davison who killed five people before killing himself in Plymouth, England, including his mother and a three-year-old girl. Before turning the gun on himself, he was part of the “incel” online community.
Dominic Adamson, a lawyer representing three of the victims’ families, said, “He had explored on numerous occasions mass killings and referred to people idolised in the incel community for perpetrating mass killings.”
In an interview with the BBC, a man they called “Liam,” who is active in the incel community, was asked if his negative feelings toward women is a result of his time on these online communities. He says that he can’t say for sure they are related, but he adds that they probably are connected.
“It’s what these communities are,” Liam said. “It sucks you in so you get into this echo chamber of people who experience similar problems.”
“You think one small [thing]… then you get other people thinking far more radical things. So you then think the small things are acceptable,” Liam went on to say.
READ MORE: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA INCREASES VIOLENCE, HOMICIDE AMONG TEENS
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