Youth violence’s rise is deeply concerning, but mass hysteria doesn’t help

This Spring marks 20 years since the release of Bullet Boy, Saul Dibb’s film about a young man called Ricky (played by Ashley Walters) who tries to resist being dragged into a cycle of gun violence after returning home from prison. It explores Ricky’s personal battles, but also his influence over an impressionable younger brother, Curtis, and the painful disappointment of his mother, Beverley, who tries to hold her family together. 

I watched Bullet Boy on VHS at my friend’s house in year 10, during the same summer holiday that we had started to venture independently into London proper from the western Heathrow suburbs. Its tender, if shocking, portrait of community life in Hackney on the other side of the capital – the representation of Black British household dynamics, the institutional failings that subtly pepper scenes and the way it shows the ease with which inner-city pressure can overwhelm even the best intentions – has stayed with me ever since. 

Which is why I found it so powerful rewatching it recently at the British Film Institute in Southbank as part of an event curated by Clive Nwonka, Associate Professor of Film, Culture and Society at UCL. After it ended, Nwonka sat with actor Clare Perkins (who plays Beverley) and an older, wiser Ashley Walters to talk about its legacy. 

Over the last two decades, Walters has become one of the most recognisable faces on British television via his roles as drug dealing king pin Dushane in Top Boy and DI Luke Bascombe in Adolescence. He has therefore played a unique hand in shaping public perceptions about lesser-understood corners of British society and youth culture. Hearing him reflect on stage about how far he has come since his portrayal of Ricky – at the time, he had just left prison himself after achieving stardom as a member of So Solid Crew – left me thinking how, over the same period, violence affecting children and young people has shifted, too. 

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For hundreds of years we have been becoming a less violent society. In the 13^th century, there were about 20 – 25 homicides per 100,000 people in the UK and Ireland. This reduced to a low of 0.3−0.5 homicides per 100,000 people in the 1930s to 1950s. Homicides increased over the latter half of the 20^th century, before decreasing again.

The trends since Bullet Boy hit cinema screens are mixed. There was a peak in violent offences committed by children in 2007, then numbers fell until 2017, which – as my book Cut Short explores on the ground in south London – saw another peak alongside soaring homicide rates before the pandemic hit. Worryingly, the latest data shows another year-on-year increase. The number of hospital admissions for knife assault amongst 0 – 17 year-olds is up 9% compared to a year ago and 58% percent compared to a decade ago.

In other words, it’s easy to assume from the hysteria of social media and doom-mongering of the tabloid press that things are always getting worse, but the picture is complicated. At the same time, there is still clearly so much to be concerned about.

Last year, the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), the charity I work at, surveyed 10,000 teenagers across England and Wales about their experiences of violence. One in five reported being a victim of violence, of whom nearly a third were a victim more than five times. 16% admitted to being a perpetrator, half of whom have been a victim themselves. 5% of teenagers have carried a weapon in the past year. All of this confirms that there is a relatively small but significant cohort of young people who face an extreme, regular interaction with violence.

Watching Bullet Boy now, I found the omnipresence of the same post-war urban conditions that persist combined with the complete absence of smartphones, which is almost unimaginable today, a striking juxtaposition. Now, 70% of teenagers have seen real world violence online, even though only 25% of them searched for it, suggesting that digital platforms are pushing violent content towards them. The impact of this extends far beyond the idle scroll of a screen. 80% of teenage children who encounter weapons-related content on social media say it makes them feel less safe in their communities and 39% admit that it makes them more likely to carry a weapon themselves. Nearly two-thirds of teenagers who report committing violence in the past year say that social media played a role in their behaviour. 

Boys and girls experience violence differently. 21% of boys have been perpetrators versus only 11% of girls. Just under half of those in romantic relationships have experienced controlling or violent behaviour from their partner. And it is no secret that, over the last 20 years, hundreds of youth clubs have closed. But these services reach those who most need them: children who’ve been directly affected by violence are twice as likely to attend one. Is it any surprise that the most vulnerable teenagers – who, back when Bullet Boy was filmed, would have had greater access to a safe space to be fed, guided and cared for – are feeling their disappearance?

• Read next: We need to talk about serious youth violence 

Beyond the data, something else has shifted in 2025, too. These first months have followed a year of campaigning by Idris Elba against zombie knives, leading to the useful (if insufficient) fast-track of their ban, and the subsequent airing of his BBC documentary, Our Knife Crime Crisis, in January. This plonked arguably one of the most nuanced hours of television about violence affecting young people ever made in British living rooms at prime time. Two months later, Adolescence dropped on Netflix, lifting the lid on how public services respond to violent tragedies involving children, breaking viewer records and sparking a nationwide conversation about the deadly risks of unchecked online influence, as well as the rise of violence against women and girls.

Indeed, such an attentive landscape is fertile soil for the seeds of change. YEF recently launched the Safe podcast, a series of conversations about violence affecting young people with adults trying to stop it. In the first episode, I spoke to Professor Carlene Firmin about her groundbreaking concept of ​‘contextual safeguarding’. In the second, I spoke to Justin Finlayson, CEO of London-based music charity United Borders, about engaging with at-risk teenagers in the recording studio. The aim is to make the best guidance about keeping children safe accessible to all. There will be six more episodes airing later this year – hit subscribe to be kept in the loop.

Holding these dialogues with experts who have been doing the work for at least as long as Bullet Boy has been in circulation was a reminder to me that although it sometimes feels like an insurmountable issue, violence is preventable. In solving social problems, we must pause to mourn, critique and process loss, but also keep our efforts moving forward to protect hope. At the decade’s halfway point, with increasing division across British society and the world, we must decide: what legacy do we want to leave behind from the 2020s?

Ciaran Thapar is the host of the Safe Podcast, director of communications at the Youth Endowment Fund and author of Cut Short. Follow him on Instagram.

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