British Netflix drama Adolescence, which has sparked widespread debate about the toxic and misogynistic influences to which young boys are exposed online, can now be shown in French secondary schools, a minister has said. The producer of the Netflix series has "opened up the rights to us," and the French Education Ministry will "offer five educational sequences to young people based on this series," Education Minister Elisabeth Borne told LCI TV late on Sunday, June 8.
The excerpts from the miniseries are "very representative of the violence that can exist among young people," Borne said, adding they would be shown in secondary schools to children from the age of around 14. Such materials are intended to help raise awareness of the problem of "overexposure to screens and the trivialization of violence on social networks," as well as the spread of theories of so-called masculinists, misogynistic spheres which advocate violence against women, Borne said.
The French initiative followed a precedent set in the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the move to screen the show, in which a 13-year-old boy stabs a girl to death after being radicalized on the internet, "an important initiative" that would help start conversations about the content teenagers consume online.
Adolescence, which was released on March 13, follows the aftermath of a schoolgirl's fatal stabbing, revealing the dangerous influences to which boys are subjected online and the secret meaning youngsters are giving to seemingly innocent emojis. The series has resonated with an audience increasingly disturbed by a litany of shocking knife crimes committed by young people and the misogynistic rhetoric of influencers like Andrew Tate. As of June 1, it reached a total of 141.2 million views, making it Netflix's second most-watched English-language series ever, according to industry magazine Variety.