British Netflix hit Adolescence to be shown in French schools

PARIS – British Netflix drama Adolescence, which has sparked widespread debate about the toxic and misogynistic influences that young boys are exposed to online, can now be shown in French secondary schools, a minister has said.

The initiative follows a precedent set in Britain.

The producer of the series broadcast on Netflix 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 June 8.

These excerpts from the mini-series are “very representative of the violence that can exist among young people”, Ms Borne said.

She added that the excerpts would be shown in secondary schools to children from the age of around 14 onwards.

Such materials are intended to help raise awareness of the problem of “overexposure to screens and the trivialisation of violence on social networks”, as well as the spread of so-called masculinist theories – misogynistic spheres that advocate violence against women, said Ms Borne.

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 radicalised 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 the 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 at June 1, Adolescence reached a total of 141.2 million views, making it Netflix’s second-most watched English-language series ever, according to industry magazine Variety. AFP