From Netflix to reality: Glenn Beck connects HS track runner’s murder to Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’

On Wednesday, April 2, Frisco Memorial High School junior Austin Metcalf, 17, was fatally stabbed at a track meet by Frisco Centennial High School’s Karmelo Anthony, 17. According to police and eyewitness accounts, Metcalf confronted Anthony about sitting in a tent designated for Memorial athletes.

Anthony refused to leave and taunted Metcalf by saying, “Touch me and see what happens.” When Metcalf grabbed him to force him out, Anthony then reached inside his bag, pulled out a knife, and stabbed him in the chest in front of his twin brother, Hunter, who held him as he died.

“I grabbed his hand and looked in his eyes. I just saw his soul leave, and it took mine, too,” he told FOX 4.

Glenn Beck is nearly driven to tears by this heartbreaking story. It’s uncannily similar, he says, to “Adolescence” — a four-part British crime drama miniseries that premiered on Netflix mid-March.

The show paints a clear picture of “what students are like, what they’re talking about, how callous they are on life,” he says. “You see what school is like and what all of our kids are actually dealing with, and it’s terrifying.”

Both the death of Austin Metcalf and the disturbing events in “Adolescence” seem to beg the question: “Is there no value to life anymore?” — especially in youth culture that has grown so ghastly in the digital age.

“Life has become so meaningless that that will get you killed,” says Glenn.

But it’s not just the children he feels sorry for. The parents have it rougher than ever, too.

“It’s so hard to be a parent now,” he admits.

All his kids have “finished adolescence” and thankfully “everybody made it out alive,” but the last 10 years he describes as “relentless.”

Your best efforts to be the perfect parent always fall short, he laments. “You just feel like a horrible parent because you’re like, ‘I don’t know what to do’” — especially when you’re constantly facing one of the most sinister foes there’s ever been: the internet.

“I’ve always hated helicopter parents, but my gosh, if you’re not a helicopter parent in your own home,” he trails off, insinuating that overprotectiveness is almost the only hope for parents these days.

“If you want to understand how screwed up our children are” — how something like a seating dispute at a track meet could leave a child dead — “just watch [‘Adolescence’].”

To hear more of his analysis, watch the episode above.

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