How to Mitigate the Crisis of Adolescence

I recently watched a TV series that exposed the dark, complex, and ugly truth about the world we have built around our children. It follows the case of a teenager accused of murdering a schoolmate. The show pulls you into a raw, real-time narrative that reveals the psychological weight young people carry today. It peels back the layers one at a time: online pressures, emotional isolation, fractured family relations, and a digital world that feeds them content they are too young to process, let alone resist. It shook the consciousness of millions.

The series explores “manosphere”, a toxic online culture peddling misogyny, teaching boys that women are the enemy, that dominance equals power, and that emotional suppression equals strength. Combining all this, perhaps young boys have never felt so lost. Now, they are being handed a map straight into the darkness, dressed up as truth.

Cruelty need not always be loud. It can be subtle. It’s a cruel emoji, a degrading meme, or a joke masked as banter. These are called microaggressions, which can be easily missed and are nearly impossible to monitor. Even with parental controls and supervision, children can be pulled under. The troubling thing is that the algorithms driving all this, created by us adults, are faster and smarter than we are. When schools cannot cope, and parents don’t see it coming, the results are tragic.

I remember meeting a mother whose child had taken his own life. She and her husband were senior civil servants. They believed their child was safe, but he was silently being abused by someone they trusted. They never saw the signs. The weight of this guilt is something they will carry forever.

You have probably heard someone say, “Kids are growing up faster these days”. But have you paused to ask why? The obvious answer is, “Children are exposed to more of the world now than ever”. Every successive generation differs from the previous one, carrying some good and bad from its ancestors and adding new good and evil. So, what is new and different?

The extraordinary rise in loneliness, isolation, impatience, intolerance, aggression, and extremism that surfaces in physical, emotional, psychological, or social violence is becoming normalised among young people globally. This is further exacerbated by computer algorithms created for profit by entertainment, social media, and information technology giants.

I feel this while meeting and working with various children and youth, from schools and universities to survivors and Juvenile delinquents. Only a few decades ago, children experienced the world through the filtered channels of parents, schools, books, and television, with limited content. Today, the internet shows them the world and actively chooses which parts to show. It isolates them in echo chambers, curating content that escalates what they already fear, resent, or question.

The world has become louder, faster, and more fractured while simultaneously more disconnected. Children feel unseen, unheard and desperate for love and care. Teachers are overwhelmed. Parents are distracted or overprotective. The space for real human connection is shrinking and being replaced by fake and superficial communication. Young people are the worst affected. This dangerous state of affairs requires a sense of urgency and deeper responsibility.

So, where does the solution lie?

Compassion is the only solution that will help us address these issues and solve problems mindfully, individually and collectively. Compassion directly counters these issues by encouraging individuals to feel others’ suffering as their own and act to alleviate it by fostering deeper connectedness, honest communication, understanding and care.

Compassion is not a soft skill, virtue, value, or choice. It is the only transformative power to mitigate this adolescent crisis. It is time for us—parents, teachers, and communities to step up and ignite the spark of compassion in everyday life. We must teach it, model it, and prioritise it.

Let us globalise compassion.