By Benedikt Büchsenschütz (Violence Prevention Network)

The Netflix series Adolescence has sparked a global conversation about youth violence, online misogyny, and the incel subculture. The four-part drama opens with the arrest of 13-year-old Jamie Miller for the murder of his peer, Katie Leonard. Rather than focusing on who committed the crime, the series explores why it happened — tracing the aftermath through Jamie’s school and family life, and shedding light on the role of toxic online communities, particularly the manosphere and incel subculture. It also touches on broader issues such as knife crime and online bullying, offering a stark portrayal of how adolescent boys can become entangled in harmful ideologies related to the manosphere. With its emotionally complex narrative and portrayal of loving, middle-class parents blindsided by their son’s actions, the series has resonated widely, prompting serious discussions among educators, parents, and policymakers about how to better prevent violence among teenagers.

Though inspired by real-life events in the United Kingdom, the scenario depicted in Adolescence could unfold anywhere. P/CVE practitioners at Violence Prevention Network report that clients are increasingly young and more difficult to reach. Current frameworks for detecting radicalisation often fall short: traditional indicators — such as clothing, music tastes, or visible subcultural affiliations — have lost their predictive value. Today, radicalisation typically emerges through everyday interactions and online exchanges, often going unnoticed by adults until it escalates into more explicit or harmful behaviour. This raises questions about successful models of parenting that foster engagement with the daily preoccupations of young people without undermining trust by sheer surveillance and monitoring of online behaviour.

While adults have always been absent from youth culture’s communal life, now they may even be unaware of it as a whole. This shift is known to extremist actors and their tactics take it into account. It is particularly visible in how right-wing and manosphere online materials have evolved. They now target younger audiences using more insidious methods. Memes, irony, gaming culture, and influencers are employed to build emotional resonance well before any ideological labels are introduced. These strategies embed reactionary content in environments that feel familiar and safe to adolescents, making them especially hard to detect or disrupt.

Misogyny often serves as a gateway. It is one of the earliest internalised ideologies of inequality and is frequently used by extremist actors — whether Islamist, far-right, or conspiratorial — as an entry point to radicalisation. Anti-transgender, anti-feminist, and anti-progressive narratives are framed as jokes, venting, or common sense, allowing them to spread unchecked. These beliefs offer men, who have perceived feelings of status loss and disadvantage an explanation for their struggles and a sense of identity. Over time, they pave the way toward more exclusionary and authoritarian worldviews. In many cases, misogyny provides the emotional and psychological foundation upon which broader extremist ideologies are built.

While much of this process begins online, its impact extends into offline behaviour. Peer groups reinforce each other’s views, validate harmful norms, and sometimes escalate into harmful (group) dynamics. The boundary between online and offline is increasingly blurred, making it essential for prevention strategies to address both as deeply interconnected.

The growing attention to incel ideology in debates on gender-based violence is undoubtedly an important step, as it points to potentially dangerous dynamics within this subculture and strategies for P/CVE practice needs to be implemented. Nevertheless, focussing too much on incels in prevention discourses falls short. It harbours the danger of narrowing the view of the broader social and structural dimensions of misogyny. The incel subculture is only one particularly visible manifestation of a much broader phenomenon in which misogynistic attitudes are present far beyond certain online forums. Misogyny is deeply rooted in social norms, everyday culture and institutional structures – and it is precisely this foundation that enables subcultures such as the incels to emerge and gain a foothold in the first place. Prevention must therefore look beyond the specific threat posed by incels and focus on the mechanisms in society that normalise and reproduce gender inequality and violence. This makes it a necessary part of primary, secondary and tertiary prevention alike. Primary prevention specifically aims to address root causes before harmful attitudes and behaviours emerge. Secondary and tertiary prevention should include gender-specific analysis of the needs and preoccupations of its clients, to better target their potential for growth. Social diagnostics and intervention plans should structurally mirror these important identification mechanisms.

In this context, blanket demonisation of the internet is not only unhelpful — it’s counterproductive. It risks pushing young people further into echo chambers and undermines efforts to foster genuine dialogue. Instead, what’s needed is a pedagogical approach rooted in trust, openness, and curiosity. Young people must be equipped with critical digital literacy, emotional resilience, and a sense of agency in navigating the digital world. Prevention efforts should provide more than warning of internet demagogues — they must offer relevance, belonging, and models of masculinity and community grounded in empathy and shared responsibility. Putting forward positive masculinity transported through relatable role models and spaces where men and boys have the opportunity to voice their fears and insecurities without repercussions is an important step educators and practitioners need to push forward for a broader policy framework.

Benedikt Büchsenschütz is a Research Fellow at Violence Prevention Network, with a focus on gender in extremism, (online) radicalisation, and hybrid ideologies. He holds a Master’s degree in Crisis and Security Management: Governance of Radicalism, Extremism and Terrorism (MSc) from Leiden University.