No longer simply intended to entertain in this hyper-connected age, television does more. If excellent, television compels us to face the changes in society as well as the fear it embodies to characterise our era. Two recent productions on Netflix, Adolescence and Zero Day, examine each one of its attendant but diverse fears about a digitalised future. One delves into the personal chaos of growing up in the age of social media, and the other imagines a cyberwarfare-infused political thriller and deception. Together, they offer a portrait of the cultural condition of the tech-infused issues that beset us now.
Adolescence: growing up under the algorithm
Adolescence is a dark and disquieting coming-of-age story of what it’s like to be a teenager in a world that’s been flooded with algorithms, screens, and virtual validation. The show follows a group of high school students as they navigate identity, peer pressure, and mental health—all through the distorted lens of social media. Coming-of-age narratives are not new, but Adolescence introduces a distinctly modern anxiety: the constant performance of self for an unseen, always judging online audience. The line between real and constructed lives blurs, and the consequences are dire. Characters go haywire under the stress of online opinion, cyber ostracism, and the perpetual quest for likes. The show gently satirises the platforms that gain from this behaviour, portraying them as merely apathetic devices rather than active shapers of youth identity and health.
Zero Day: democracy under digital siege
On the other end, Zero Day is a high-stakes political thriller with an imaginary retired U.S. president, Robert De Niro, in the middle of a national crisis ignited by a catastrophic cyberattack. The series weaves real threats together: weaknesses in digital infrastructure, the spread of conspiracy theories, and the manipulation of the public’s opinion through coordinated information campaigns. As the story unfolds, audiences are forced to pose difficult questions: Who wields the digital levers of power? Can democracy survive the weaponisation of data? Zero Day draws hair-raising parallels to real events, from foreign cyberattacks to the viral spread of disinformation, illustrating how susceptible our systems have become to invisible enemies.
Both series, though different in tone and scope, meet on a common ground: our common vulnerability to the unintended consequences of technology. In Adolescence, the damage is psychological and emotional, often invisible but no less real. In Zero Day, the threat is structural to the very institutions and infrastructures that underpin society. What they have in common is a sense of powerlessness before rapidly developing technologies that outstrip regulation, ethics, and even comprehension. These narratives reflect pressing realities. Cybersecurity is no longer a technical concern; it is at the core of national security, economic well-being, and public trust. As Zero Day makes clear, an advanced cyberattack can paralyze a country more effectively than conventional warfare. This is not science fiction—it’s a given reality among policymakers and defence strategists.
Meanwhile, Adolescence is fueled by the mental health emergency triggered by virtual existence. Several studies now link excessive social media use with anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem among young people. The intricately constructed perfection of digital personas generates unattainable ideals and facilitates continuous comparison, as well as quantifiable psychological expense.
A digital mirror to our future
Technology, these series suggest, is not inevitably dystopian. But its unregulated deployment can heighten our most profound anxieties and intensify pre-existing fault lines in our societies. What we see on screen is an echo of what we fear—and, in the process, an affording of us with the vocabulary to explore issues that are challenging. Netflix, either by design or accident, is a platform in which these issues are contested, forcing viewers to interrogate their own online activity and social assumptions. Ultimately, Adolescence and Zero Day do more than provide great stories.
They hold up a mirror to our current and potential future and demonstrate just how inexorably linked we are to the technologies we’ve created. Whether it’s a lost teenager wandering through a maze of curated content or a nation brought to its knees by invisible code, the message is clear: learning and mastering technology is one of the defining dilemmas of the age. Streaming platforms may not have the answers, but they can certainly point us in the direction of the right questions.
