A nightmare.... every parent should see this

SARA WALLIS on the unmissable new Netflix show

- SARA WALLIS

• Teen murder, Social media pressure, toxic masculinity.….

ON the very day that my son turned 13, as the "teenager in the house sympathy messages piled up and I wondered how my baby was suddenly taller than me, a new drama was released that terrified me to my very core.

Netflix's latest ratings hit Adolescence tells the devastating story of a family's world being turned upside down when their 13-year-old son is arrested for the murder of a girl at his school.

Of course, it's highly unlikely that your sweet little boy is going to head out one day and kill someone, but this very clever crime thriller shows just how possible that might be.

By the end of the series, I had all but decided that the best course of action was probably to tell my son Josh that we're all moving to a cave somewhere incredibly remote with no wi-fi.

Created by actor Stephen Graham and screenwriter Jack Thorne, the drama explores frightening themes of social media, toxic masculinity and misogyny.

Through intense, one-take, real-time episodes, we find out that while parents might think their child is safe in their bedroom, out of harm's way they could in fact be being sucked into a dangerous, hate-filled virtual world that can spiral out of control.

So, as the huge, foil '13' balloons bobbed up and down in the corner of my living room, I bingewatched the four gripping hours of television, that brought me out in a cold sweat - and had me vowing to ban all devices forever.