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Smartphones should be treated like cigarettes and banned until the age of 16 in the UK, according to the writer of Adolescence, which explores the insidious influence of “incel-culture”.
Jack Thorne, whose Netflix show has started a national conversation about the danger of online spaces for teenagers, argued that algorithms used on social media platforms could quickly lead to “dark spaces”.
“If it was my decision, I would be talking of smartphones like cigarettes and issuing an outright ban on all use by under-16s, but if that isn’t possible the digital age of consent is a fine alternative,” said Thorne, who co-wrote the show with actor Stephen Graham.
He called for the government to take “radical” action against tech companies, and follow France, Norway and Australia in restricting teenagers’ access to social media.
Academics and campaigners have praised Adolescence for shining a light on the “manosphere”, a label given to a disparate online world denigrating feminism and promoting misogyny.
The show follows 13-year-old Jamie Miller, played by Owen Cooper, who is arrested for the murder of a female classmate. The second episode – which refers to Andrew Tate, a misogynistic influencer who recently travelled to the US despite facing charges of rape and people trafficking in Romania – also explores the secret meaning contained in emojis used by teenagers online.
A teenage character explains that the use of a red pill – a reference to a red pill showing the world as it is, from the film The Matrix – “is like ‘I see the truth’. It’s a call to action by the manosphere”. An “exploding red pill” indicates someone is an incel, he says. The character goes on to explain that the 100 emoji is another incel symbol, related to the “80 to 20 rule”, the incel theory that 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men.
Dr Robert Lawson, an expert on sociolinguistics from Birmingham City University, cautioned of “moral panic” around the use of emojis in teenage online discourse, the vast majority of which were likely to be innocuous, he said. But he added that incel culture used a range of words and acronyms to signify belonging to the community, including include Twot (“that whore over there) and Awalt (“all women are like that”).
“There’s an element of, if you want to be a part of this community, you need to learn the lingo,” he said. “There is a need to create new terms that speak to the issues in this community [and] within the manosphere, it’s a virulent strain of anti-feminist and anti-women sentiment.”
A study from Dublin City University’s anti-bullying centre last year found that social media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts fed and amplified anti-feminist and other extremist content to blank smartphones registered as 16- to 18-year-old boys within 23 minutes of use. Research in February last year found young men from generation Z were more likely than baby boomers to believe feminism had done more harm than good.
The use of emojis in the manosphere is not new, said Prof Dr Lisa Sugiura, an expert in incel culture from the University of Portsmouth. “[Emojis] can also be used to circumvent content moderation,” she said. “So it’s not necessarily clear to social media platforms if it is being used in a way that is hateful or bullying.”
The Online Safety Act, which came into law on Monday, will fine social media companies if they fail to prevent children seeing the most harmful content, and minimise exposure to abuse, including misogyny. But while platforms had been told to consider “coded language”, incel emojis will only be seen as harmful if used to incite hatred of women, said a spokesperson from Ofcom, the UK watchdog overseeing the act.
Daisy Greenwell, a cofounder of Smartphone Free Childhood, said public debate prompted by the Netflix show should push the government to take direct action to ban addictive smartphone algorithms aimed at young teenagers. The safer phones bill, a private member’s bill from the Labour MP Josh MacAlister backed by the group, was watered down earlier this month after opposition to tougher measures.
“Adolescence has really struck a chord, expresses the deep fear that we all have parents that as soon as we give our kid a smartphone we lose control,” she said.
“It’s not fair to suggest that this is something that parents can solve. We need better legislation so that all kids are safe, not just those whose parents have got the time to make sure they’re not looking at incel content.”
