Is Netflix trivialising teen PAIN? Scientists claim popular shows including Sex Education and Stranger Things play down suffering in youngsters

Netflix is ​​downplaying the pain teens experience in popular content such as sex education, Stranger Things and Spiderman, a new study claims.

Studying more than 60 hours of Netflix movies and TV shows, psychologists found that depictions of pain in adolescent characters are “misleading.”

Too often, physical pain is portrayed on Netflix as something that only results from a violent act or injury, such as an assault or an accident, they say.

But more realistic forms of pain in the real world are ‘chronic pain’ such as headaches, back pain, menstrual pain and pain from diseases such as cancer.

Because these Netflix productions are largely aimed at teenagers, experts are now calling on the streaming giant to change the way it depicts pain so they can better learn empathy and compassion.

The new study was led by researchers from the University of Bath and the University of Calgary in Canada.

‘If we don’t show the types of pain that adolescents typically experience, such as back pain and period pain, we are trivializing pain,’ says Dr Abbie Jordan from the University of Bath’s Department of Psychology.

“We’re not doing a good job of empowering them to think about how to deal with pain, how to talk about pain, and how to show empathy when other people experience pain.”

The study – published in the journal Pain – looked only at examples of physical pain, not emotional or psychological pain.

Researchers analyzed how characters’ pain experiences were depicted in various Netflix content aimed at 12- to 18-year-olds.

They studied ten films and six TV series, which amounts to more than 60 hours of footage.

The films include Spider-Man: Homecoming, Alex Strangelove, Enola Holmes, Midnight Sun and The Perfect Date.

Meanwhile, the likes of Sex Education, Stranger Things, Outer Banks, Riverdale and 13 Reasons Why were looked at, which controversially depicted issues such as teenage suicide, sexual assault and rape.

Of all productions, Outer Banks, a show featuring teenagers hunting for treasure on an island, had the highest number of pain cases: 145.

This was followed by the popular science fiction hit Stranger Things (95), 13 Reasons Why (85) and Riverdale (68), a teen drama about high school students after the death of a classmate.

Across all 16 productions, there were a total of 732 painful incidents – an average of 10.24 per hour.

But the majority of these pain cases – 57 percent – ​​were violent pain or injury, rather than chronic or medical pain.

“There was a predominance of violence and injuries, while everyday, chronic pain and medical/procedural pain were rarely represented,” the team said in their paper.

Pain was generally quickly pushed aside to move the storyline forward, rather than being an important part of the story that required attention, they also found.

In addition, there was a general lack of empathetic responses to other characters’ experiences of pain – usually criticism of the person in pain, but also even humor.

Interestingly, boy characters were 77 percent more likely to experience pain compared to girl characters.

Boys were often portrayed as heroic figures who came to the rescue and were twice as likely as girls to help patients, while girls were usually portrayed as the ‘damsel in distress’.

Girls were also depicted as being more emotional than boys in response to seeing pain.

“If every movie and TV show shows a boy as a ‘tough guy’ when they experience pain and a girl as a ‘damsel in distress’ who needs to be saved, they might think they should be that way in real life too.” , he says. Dr. Jordan.

‘This image reinforces outdated ideas about gender and is misleading.’

The researchers also found that white characters were depicted as pain sufferers more often than characters of other races.

When someone with a racial identity experienced pain, they were 80 percent more likely to experience pain caused by someone else.

“This is consistent with stereotypes and distortions about the ability of people from racial groups to withstand physical pain,” the team says.

“There is a belief among some white medical students that black people have thicker skin and therefore have a higher pain tolerance than white people.”

The researchers now want to work with Netflix to address gender and racial imbalances and the lack of realistic portrayals of chronic pain.

‘We would like to work with Netflix and film/television makers to increase the representation of girls and people of color in cases where pain is experienced, and start a dialogue about how we can respond more realistically to pain in others, thinking about pro-social behavior. behavior and showing empathy,” Dr. Jordan said.

MailOnline has contacted Netflix for comment.