In case you haven’t seen it, the show focuses on 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), who is arrested on suspicion of murdering his classmate, Katie.<\/p>\n
However, it’s more than a murder case as it explores the deeper impact of toxic masculinity under the ever-growing ‘manosphere’ <\/a>online on young boys – and everyone and anyone putting on their analysis caps to deep-dive into certain aspects of the show. <\/a><\/p>\n While actor Stephen Graham<\/a>, who stars as Jamie’s father in the show, has opened up about how knife crime amongst young people was part of the inspiration<\/a> for the show’s plot, both he and co-creator, Jack Thorne, have made it clear that it isn’t based on a singular story. <\/p>\n However, some on social media<\/a> are insisting the opposite. <\/p>\n Last week, one X<\/a> account made the unfounded accusation that Adolescence is based on the horrific Southport attacks<\/a> which saw three young girls tragically murdered by Axel Rudakubana last year, and that the show’s creators allegedly decided to ‘race-swap’ the main character as part of ‘anti-white propaganda’.<\/p>\n This post was then responded to by Elon Musk<\/a>, who shared it while simply writing: “Wow.”<\/p>\n While many online criticised both the account and Musk for pushing ‘reckless’ misinformation<\/a>, writer Thorne has also criticised these claims. <\/p>\n Speaking on The News Agents<\/a> podcast, he said (via<\/a> The Independent): “They\u2019ve claimed that Stephen and I based it on a story, and another story, so we race-swapped because we were basing it on here and it ended up there, and everything else. Nothing is further from the truth.<\/p>\n “I have told a lot of real-life stories in my time. I know the harm that can come when you take elements of a real-life story, and you put it on screen, and the people aren\u2019t expecting it. <\/p>\n “There is no part of this that\u2019s based on a true story, not one single part.”<\/p>\n Thorne went on to further criticise the view that knife crime is only caused by ‘Black boys’, adding: “That it should have been a Black boy? It’s absurd to say that [knife crime] is only committed by Black boys. <\/p>\n “It\u2019s absurd. It’s not true. And history shows a lot of cases of kids from all races committing these crimes.<\/p>\n “We\u2019re not making a point about race with this. We are making a point about masculinity. We\u2019re trying to get inside a problem. We\u2019re not saying this is one thing or another. We\u2019re saying this is about boys.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The creator of Netflix hit Adolescence has shut down the ‘absurd’ claims regarding the show being shared online…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[450,295,77,451,182,506,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-adolescence","9":"tag-elon-musk","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-netflix","12":"tag-social-media","13":"tag-stephen-graham","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114261433119820207","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Adolescence](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/adolescence-netflix.jpeg\"\/)
Adolescence has raised a lot of questions about the impact of social media on kids, particularly young boys (Netflix)<\/p>\n![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/480000122_934827445500209_8376911144052609567_n.jpg\"\/)
Elon Musk shared the inaccurate claims on X, a move which earned him a bit of criticism (Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n