Mental Health: Nurture versus Nature - "Adolescence" and The Great Debate

Details

Category: Health, Wellness

Published on Tuesday, 25 March 2025 07:46

Written by Janet Walker

Like many, I streamed the top Netflix limited series, "Adolescence," which opens to a shocking scene a family home being raided by local police, and a freckled face boy is detained for suspicion of murdering his classmate.

"Adolescence" is shown in four segments, over the course of a year, and the ending, which has become a great point of debate is the age-old argument of nurture versus nature.

Health, Wellness: How to Explain Suicide to Children

Understanding nature is considered the external and nurture, the internal, scholars have debated this question of how the citizen is influenced, is it nurture or nature?

Nature, a constant diet of an external messaging, advertisements, we see this in politics, our current administration certainly uses constant rhetoric to reshape the mind of the populous, much like a hurricane reshapes a shoreline through erosion.

Or is the citizen, the individual, influenced more by nurture? The ideals from early nurturing in the home from religious choices, parental guidance, matriarchal or patriarchal dominance? Madison Avenue would like to believe consumers are generational, my mom used Tide detergent or Colgate toothpaste, so now, as an adult, I do to. Are our range of brand choices based on nurturing?

Relationships: Many Dating Apps Ban Convicted of Felonies. Does That Make Anyone Safer?

So, in contemporary society have the lines between nurture versus nature blurred? In "Adolescence," at the end when the father played by Stephen Graham, is trying to understand where he failed his family, they were upper middle class, he was a hardworking man, gave his family a good home, loved his wife, affectionate in front of the children. And the parents kept asking themselves, could we have known?

They talked about the computer and all the accessories, gaming, cellphones, all without chaperone tracking and incremental increases in decision-making allowing his son what he thought was privacy.  

With the privacy of the internet, a world was opened to him. As a good boy, the son was allowed privileges to hang out with his friends. So as kids do, each parent thought they were hanging out at the homes of the other kids, instead they were roaming the streets, not looking for trouble, just hanging out at the park, late at 9:30 P.M., on a school night.

Interventional Empathy: A Way to Deescalate Destructive and Self-Destructive Behavior

So back to nurture verses nature. By 13, one would think the constant messaging this boy received was what he saw his parents do each day? Unfortunately, by 13, in much of the population, the nurturing phase is completed and the nature, the persuasion of friends, peer pressure, and the messaging of perfection from the internet, from commercials, advertisements, movies, the external, has become the new constant message. The universal questions of Am I okay? Am I good looking? Am I pretty? How will people see me? Am I good enough? Will I ever? What's wrong with me? Why don't I fit in? Our self-esteem, unless we have a strong foundation is guided by nature.

And of course, at 13, hormones, raging uncontrollable hormones have been set loose like wild horses yearning to run free and between needing to keep up with those who seemed to have matured gracefully, and the steady stream of Instagram images, the availability of internet pictures (beyond one's imagination) and a sudden feeling of validation when someone in the universe of the internet likes your comments, with each time a feeling of acceptance, empowerment, until an influencer targets your feed, and becomes your worst nightmare.

Dr. Mark Goulston, Suicide Prevention Expert, Speaks On Teen Suicide and The Warning Signs

So, in "Adolescence" the cool girl explains the statics of 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men and begins targeting those outside of her peer group. Her internet bashing carries over into school, these boys she targets are ostracized, her mean girl bullying begins to destroy the solid foundation built by his parents, and her comments, as the cool girl, who is seen as an authority on the relationship possibilities for life, has suddenly reduced him, in his mind, to a loveless, meaningless, unfilled life, with his self-esteem gone and confidence destroyed, he see one out, stop the messaging.

In our contemporary society, scholars will continue to debate nurture verses nature, and all the layers of this argument however, corporate profits of the leading technology companies seem to boldly proclaim nature is the new nurturer force in society.

"Adolescence" is streaming on Netflix, and stars Stephen Graham, Owen Cooper, Christine Tremarco, Amelie Pease. The series was written by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne and directed by Philip Barantini.

Janet Walker is the publisher, founder, and sole owner of Haute-Lifestyle.com. A graduate of New York University, she has been covering international news through the Beltway Insider, a weekly review of the nation's top stories, for more than a decade.  A general beat writer/reporter and entertainment/film critic, she is also an accomplished news/investigative news/crime reporter and submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration "Cops Conspire to Deep Six Sex Assaults" in the Breaking News Category and was persuaded to withdraw the submission. Ms. Walker has completed five screenplays, "The Six Sides of Truth," "The Assassins of Fifth Avenue," "The Wednesday Killer," "The Manhattan Project," and the sci-fi thriller "Project 13: The Last Day." She is completing the non-fiction narrative, "Unholy Alliances: A True Crime Story," which is expected to be released in early 2025. She is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Writers Union, and a former member of the International Federation of Journalists.