Teenagers 'devastated' by impact of social media

Young people who are part of the Swan Youth Project have been involved in workshops to tackle issues brought up by the TV show Adolescence

Young people in a workshop tackling issues associated with the TV show Adolescence said "the damage had already been done" to a generation from social media and "helplessness caused by it can be devastating".

The Netflix show has led to a national conversation about the impact of social media and "manosphere" influencers on children.

Now, the Swan Youth project in Berkhamsted, has used funding from the Hertfordshire Community Foundation, to teach teenagers about healthy relationships and how to recognise coercive behaviour.

Manager Parul Dix said young people already felt "disempowered" by the "big social media cog that was whirring away, leaving them like fodder".

Suri, Lex and Meg attended the sessions and said social media had had an impact on all their lives in some way

Adolescence told the story of a 13-year-old boy who murders a female classmate, and became the first streaming show to top the UK's weekly TV ratings in March 2025.

The government is considering introducing tougher online safety measures to limit the amount of time children can spend on social media, but Swan volunteer Lex, 16, said it was "a bit late and that the damage had already been done".

He felt things had "definitely got a lot worse recently with social media... at this point I don't really see a solution".

Previous issues with social media meant he limited his time on the platforms, but he admitted he "probably needed to limit myself more".

He said he preferred making connections in person and "didn't really socialise with people online" anymore.

Suri, 17, said young people needed to be "responsible for themselves" and be disciplined in "not going to find content they weren't ready for" but she admitted social media could be "devastating", leaving people "helpless".

She added that "schools can do things, but without funding and investment in education programs the responsibility falls upon establishments like The Swan".

Megan, also 17, said Adolescence had definitely made more people aware of the issues and she said she had not known "the emojis had those connotations".

In the drama, those meanings are explained to a detective by his son.

Although her mum was a teacher, she worried she "had not had the specialist training to deal with things like that" in class.

She felt workshops like the one she had attended would be important "to be able to hear from young people themselves how they feel about the issues in the show".

Project manager Parul Dix said that words like rape and pedophile were being used by young people who didn't really know what they meant

Ms Dix, who runs workshops, said they also looked at how teenagers handle rejection, as she said some youngsters use words like "frigid" to describe people that do not fancy them.

She added there was a need to educate teens to stop using words like "paedophile, pervert or rape" without "a real understanding of what they mean" as she worried that some became "labels that would stick to young people".

She feared a whole generation had "gone through the process [of dealing with social media], and had come out really damaged as a result".