TV's wake-up call to protect our children

IF YOU are not among the 24 million viewers electrified and horror-stricken by Stephen Graham’s searing Netflix series Adolescence, hurry up and find some -where you can watch it. Without spoiling the suspense, I guarantee you will be unable to take your eyes off the screen and become so discombobulated you will almost wish that you had chosen a cookery show instead.

- Vanessa Feltz

Adolescence illustrates chillingly what many of us have been told but not fully understood. Teenagers are umbilically linked to the smart-phones supplied with kind intent by their parents.

At some level, mums and dads know that in handing their children this sophisticated device, they expose them simultaneously to content that is worthwhile and character-building and content that is evil, cruel, demeaning and destabilising. They know they are taking an incalculable risk. Yet they bow to pester power and peer pressure. Meaning well, they present the minors in their care with the power to derail their lives and destroy their reputations.