I could barely stand it at times, but it was like a car wreck in which I found myself unable to turn away, becoming just one of the thousands of people tuning in to the Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why.
“I’m not watching that,” my husband bluntly said as I turned it on the first time. While I knew the show’s premise was about a student’s reasons for killing herself, I wasn’t prepared for the dark descent into a girl’s troubled life and mind, as hidden secrets and fatal accidents to graphic depictions of rape and suicide unfold, in the on-screen version of Jay Asher’s popular book. Despite hoping and praying for a miracle to happen, for fresh-faced innocence to survive, the entire show is a march to an inevitable, doomed conclusion.
‘Was this a good thing for kids to be watching?’ I wondered. It’s a point of controversy – in some ways, 13 Reasons opens the door to conversations about the things we might otherwise brush under the carpet, but I believe there really is a level of maturity to be expected when a student with a developing mind is exposed to this kind of content.
An Edmonton elementary school principal obviously had even more reservations about the show, sending parents an email last week to tell their children not to talk about the show with their classmates.
Obviously, you can’t stop students from talking with each other, but I think the message that may have failed to be sent was that parents should be talking about these issues with their children themselves. It was astonishing in this show, that a young student could go through so much heartache and pain, but not tell anyone the depth of her despair. The adult figures in the show are completely clueless as to the drama playing out under their roofs and in their children’s lives.
As I recently talked with local RCMP member, Cpl. Dave Henry, he explained this is common, saying he once knew a girl who bottled up much of the bullying that she was being subjected to for two years before telling anyone. On the flip side, students that you would never expect in years to be nasty are capable of sending messages through the anonymity of a screen that “would peel your skin off,” he said, adding parents should have access to phones and passwords.
I don’t have a teenager yet, but I’m bracing for that time, remembering how difficult junior high and the transition into adulthood was for me personally. What could I do, I asked, to keep the lines of communication open, so that my child could trust me to tell me what was going on in his/her life?
Henry’s advice was simple –“Have supper together.” So much of the time, we expect our children to behave in a way that we don’t. I put restrictions on my children’s cell phone/device use, but I also believe that I need to put my phone away and give them my attention if I expect them to know that their world doesn’t begin and end on a glowing, 5 x 2 inch screen.
That said, if you have children and they are watching this show, you should be watching it with them. We can’t follow our kids’ online activity every step of the way or watch everything they are doing, but we do need a sense of the worlds they live in, physical, mental, emotional – and virtual. It won’t be enough to save the doomed Hannah Baker, but hopefully, vigilance, openness and communication will be a tether for our non-fictional children to stay a part of our lives.
