Free-Range Kids

The Real Lord of the Flies Story Netflix Isn't Telling

The famous novel portrays kids as savages when left to their own devices. But is that actually true?

Lenore Skenazy | 5.11.2026 5:32 PM

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(Illustration: Lord of the Flies/William Golding/Penguin Classics/Lord of the Flies/Netflix/Janine Turner/Instagram)

Netflix's splashy take on Lord of the Flies has renewed interest in the tale, which follows a group of British boys descending into savagery after getting stranded on a remote island. So let me repeat what the great psychologist Peter Gray always reminds us about that story: It is fiction.

We can't use it as a reason to give kids less freedom because "this is what happens." No, it isn't.

In fact, as Gray points out, there's a different story of six boys marooned on a tropical island in 1965. One key contrast: It actually happened—a little over ten years after Lord of the Flies was published. The kids weren't found for 15 months. Did they kill each other and stick a pig head on a spike?

No. Not only did they build shelter and divvy up tasks, they went so far as to hold funerals for the birds they killed to eat.

So much for barbarism.

The "Tongan Castaways" had been buddies at........

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