This story contains spoilers about the Netflix series ‘Adolescence.’

In the Netflix series Adolescence, we have no idea why Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) is arrested at the beginning of the first episode. The tension from seeing a helpless 13-year-old boy escorted to a police station and interrogated holds us to the screen. Every minute of the one-hour episode, shot in a single continuous take, makes us feel like we are in the police station with the Miller family, viewing things through his parents’ disorientation.

As the plot unfolds, we are given clues to explain the inexplicable, but we can’t fully appreciate the show’s magnitude until the very last scene, a dramatic moment where we see the boy’s father (Stephen Graham) cry over his son’s teddy bear while asking it for forgiveness.

From an educational psychology angle, the show is ripe for analysis. One could comment on the premature sexualization of young girls and boys or the obsolete sense, for parents, that they can assume kids are safe when they’re at home in their rooms.

However, as a doctoral student in educational psychology, I am mostly concerned with human learning — both the cognitive development that must accompany successful learners, and how children and youth understand the world through relationships.

The state of Jamie’s cognitive development and of teenagers in general may help us understand his frame of mind — or the “why” that detective Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) pursues.

For parents, this show raises serious questions about the crisis in parent-child communication and how the internet is shaping children’s behaviour and minds. I suggest turning to the practice of dialogue as a way for parents to strengthen their

© The Conversation