The furor over the provocative new Netflix miniseries “Adolescence” — which centers around a 13-year-old boy’s fictitious murder of a female classmate — has kickstarted an important conversation about boys and manosphere influences. The clamor aligns with the prevailing worldview that boys are becoming, or are vulnerable to becoming, violent misogynists. Not only does this one-dimensional mindset lack broader nuance and context. It lacks any understanding of who boys are today and, most importantly, their deeper needs.

“Adolescence” also explores the layers around kids’ toxic online lives: parents’ and educators’ ignorance of this codified, land-mined terrain and the profound bullying that pushes many vulnerable teens to extreme lengths that endanger themselves and others. Yet the sole focus of handwringing over this show has been reduced, exclusively, to the implied connection between the boy-murderer and his embrace of the manosphere (a collection of online sites and male influencers who, among other things, blame radical feminism for their dimmed economic and romantic prospects).

The takeaway from all of this: Teen boys are predators-in-waiting. This systemic boy-blaming shouldn’t come as a surprise. From social media to legacy media news stories to co-ed classrooms to streaming platforms to advertisements featuring only young women, young males today are bombarded with messages that denigrate their identity (‘toxic’) and question their relevance. As someone who has been interviewing scores of older boys and young men for a new book that explores their dearth of resiliency and emotional connection, I can vouch for this. “The hostility for men, which is everywhere, leaves me feeling hurt and annoyed, because simply being seen as a ‘man’ carries the implication that I’m a bad person,” said one then-college freshman.

To be clear: Online and offline misogyny are clear problems — this is never something we want to encourage in boys and young men.

There is a disturbing problem with prevailing narratives, though, including those sprouting up from “Adolescence”: They reduce boys’ and young men’s identities to monolithic predators. The assumption is that if they are drawn to the manosphere — regardless of the reason and how long they remain there — they have crossed a forbidden threshold and are, ipso facto, violent misogynists. This is why, for example, there are calls in the United Kingdom to add incels to their list of sanctioned terrorists.

Experts on this topic know better. Ben Rich, a senior lecturer at Curtin University whose research focuses on extremism, political violence and Middle East politics, told me that “the media oversimplifies this narrative [about boys and young men who enter manosphere spaces]. These young males are not a homogenous block … [and] they are exponentially far more likely to hurt themselves than they are women or anyone else.”

Allysa Czerwinsky agrees. The fellow at the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism has written that the predictable media connection between incels and violence against women is a tenuous claim, at best. And it misdirects the spotlight. In a post on the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats website, Czerwinsky suggested that the media and critics should focus on the qualities of troubled young men who commit supremacist violence.

Perhaps the most glaring omission in this conversation is the lack of “voice” from boys and young men. Everyone is, understandably, concerned they are flocking to the manosphere, but no one is asking why.

Misogyny isn’t the reason many boys and young men initially seek out the manosphere. They do so for existential reasons. Older boys and young men are falling behind at all levels of education (and, increasingly, are questioning the merits of it) and in gainful employment. They are greatly impacted by a large proportion of young women who, research shows, do in fact renounce them romantically and sexually. Many of them struggle with under- or mis-diagnosed anxiety and depression, are at the fore of the loneliness epidemic and are, far and away, the most vulnerable demographic to suicide. As Rich, who has conducted research for the U.S. State Department on extremism, disinformation and the manosphere, wrote in The Conversation: “For many young men, their introduction to the manosphere begins not with hatred of women … but in young men’s search for connection, truth, control and community at a time when all are increasingly ill-defined.”

Sadly, these noxious spaces are sometimes the only places where many of them feel safe, accepted and understood for simply identifying as cisgendered males.

Older boys and young men have shared with me the messages that initially drew them to such popular manosphere influencers as Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson.

They weren’t drawn to the misogynistic rants but to life lessons offering agency: the need to be more accountable, more responsible, to let go of what you can’t control, to stop and think before reacting. Are these self-help messages — which more young males need to learn — merely gateway drugs to more devious worldviews? Perhaps. Either way, they are messages of hope and guidance boys need and want to hear.

It’s heartening to hear that, beyond the predictable demonizing arising from “Adolescence,” a few politicians such as Maryland’s Gov. Wes Moore seek to finally address the problems boys and young men face. Hopefully, they will keep in mind that the conversations swirling around boys shouldn’t be about boys.

They should be with boys.

If far more parents, educators and politicians would lead with curiosity rooted in context and compassion when having such conversations — instead of accusation and judgment, which only shame boys — they would move the needle on boys’ struggles.

With this approach, parents and educators would be taking the first steps to actually helping and caring for boys, instead of pushing them into the arms of the very men we keep insisting we fear.

Andrew Reiner (areiner@towson.edu) teaches at Towson University and is the author of “Better Boys, Better Men: The New Masculinity That Creates Greater Courage and Emotional Resiliency” (HarperOne, 2020) and the upcoming book “Boys Re-Connected: The Growing Epidemic of Alienation and How To Stop It” (Johns Hopkins University Press).