Adolescence

Many of you who are reading this will have already read Mònica Planas's critique in this same newspaper that warns of the punch in the stomach that the series makes you hear Adolescence, that is necessary to find on Netflix mixed, I would almost say hidden, among other minor products.

Television critics say that Adolescence It's the best series Netflix has released in recent months, due to its narrative approach, its acting quality, and its willingness to explore society. I couldn't agree more. But I'd like to add a personal consideration: I think this series challenges the viewer on a very private level. Upon finishing it, there are only three options: you feel terrified if you have teenage children, or you celebrate not having any, or, as in my case, you're grateful that yours made that journey, difficult in itself, when social media hadn't yet turned it into a living hell.

I think the series provokes genuine unease because it puts a reality before your eyes: it's practically impossible to protect our children from the evils and perversions they have access to locked in their rooms. The lead actor, that thirteen-year-old boy who maintains a childlike and vulnerable appearance, manages to make us tremble with the prowess of his performance.

While I devoured the episodes ofAdolescence, I was reading a novel by the Italian writer Silvia Avallone titled Black ChoirI discovered this author many years ago with Steel and after so many years it has not disappointed me in the least.

Black Choir also gives prominence to teenagers—or rather, young adults who have been traumatized by a disastrous adolescence. Emilia and Bruno are not victims of social media; they barely use mobile phones, but they still live with great anguish in this global world where everyone knows who they are and what happened to them.

Avallone is emphatic about the great traumas of adolescence: "It's not true that you move forward later. Then there are the consequences."

As in the British series, based, by the way, on a true event, the protagonist and his entire family must accept the consequences of the actions committed during a moment of mental alienation.

The underlying message that unites the series Adolescence and the novel Black Choir It's rather pessimistic: no matter how hard we try to do well as parents, we can't protect our children from the world and from life.

Jamie's parents and Emilia's father are desolate, powerless characters, who can't find an answer to the big question: What have we done wrong? I can imagine how impossible the mission of trying to save children from social media, full of secret codes, perverse intentions, and abominable messages, is. Prohibition is never the way forward, and extreme surveillance is almost impossible.

I think of the fathers and mothers who had to protect their children in times of war, or when antibiotics and other treatments were unavailable, or if they lived in the middle of the forest exposed to ferocious beasts. I had always felt sorry for them when I read period novels, but now, honestly, I don't think those times were any worse than the ones we are living through now.