Carrie & the terrifying teen cruelty in our hyper digital world

There is a scene in Carrie—the recent TV series of Stephen King’s first book which took the world by storm 52 years ago—that is unforgettable. Carrie, the sheltered and homeschooled teen, has her periods in the locker room of her high school.

She doesn’t know anything about periods due to her strict religious upbringing; and the high-schoolers upon discovering go into full bully mode. They throw her in the shower, everyone throws tampons at her and there’s a mass frenzy where every girl in the women’s shower room joins in the fun – ‘Carrie Red’ they all scream as a horrified girl cowers as her kind outlook about the world is shattered just as her girlhood. It’s all recorded on social media and shared.The horror of Stephen King's Carrie has always been supernatural, but the machinery that produces her humiliation is recognizably human. That is the genius of King’s first book, which was almost not published because he threw away his pages in the dustbin. King’s wife found it, saw the potential and asked him to keep on writing. That’s why and how the world got Carrie in 1974. It became an instant bestseller. The rest is history.

Cut to 2026, Flannagan’s Carrie is a scathing indictment of the times we live in. Social media is at the forefront of the horror auteur’s adaptation. He said in a recent interview to The Independent that Carrie had not dissipated over the years, but grown more relevant than ever. The abuse and violence that’s always existed in schools has in fact “metastasised” on the internet and on mobile phones. “There is something new and vital to say about being a teenager today and about the nature of cruelty and kindness,” Flannagan said.This particular adaptation poses a disturbing question about modern adolescence: What happens when teenage cruelty becomes a collective sport? What happens when humiliation becomes social currency, and the person everyone targets is pushed beyond the limits of what they can bear?Because the troubling thing about teenage cruelty is that it rarely announces itself as cruelty. It arrives often disguised as a joke or a nickname.

Sometimes, a meme, an exclusive group chat, or a video shared simply because everyone else is laughing.Adolescents have always policed one another's looks, clothes, bodies, social standing, and romantic desirability. But the culture in which they do this has fundamentally changed. Humiliation can now be recorded, replayed, circulated, and preserved long after the school day is over. The audience is no longer confined to the classroom or the corridor.This dynamic presents a picture far more compelling than the familiar argument that social media has simply made teenagers meaner. It says emphatically that modern digital culture rewards cruelty with attention, belonging, and status.

Humiliation as currency and reward

The transformation of teenage conflict is rooted in how digital networks alter social incentives. In his psychological research on adolescent popularity, Dr. Mitch Prinstein, author and psychology professor, drew a clear distinction between two forms of social standing: likability and status.Likability, he said, is built on mutual trust, kindness, and making peers feel valued. Status, on the other hand, is driven by power, dominance, visibility, and social influence. And in this world where everyone is obsessed over their filtered and masked lives, status is all that matters.Psychology also says that during early adolescence, sensitivity to peer standing reaches its peak. On digital platforms, status is measured through visible metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and follower counts.

In this environment, targeting an outsider often functions as social currency.Mocking or excluding a peer allows participants to signal alignment with the dominant group, earning attention and status at the victim's expense.

When lines of decency disappear

Many psychologists and cultural commentators have been highlighting for the past two decades that the exponential growth of online harassment has created a profound shift in moral boundaries.

As cruelty is continuously replayed and gamified, standard boundaries of acceptable behaviour have disintegrated in our society.Author and journalist Jon Ronson, who has documented online public shaming, observes how peer groups establish boundaries through public destruction: “We’re defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside of it.”

When public shaming becomes a daily routine, cruelty ceases to feel extreme to those participating in it.

This insensitivity is accelerated by digital detachment. It’s as if we are being cruel by posting it’s not real. It’s not tangible. There are no consequences.Furthermore, educational psychologists have pointed out that modern adolescent cruelty has grown increasingly covert and sophisticated. Journalist Rick Hampson, summarizing psychological research on modern school dynamics, wrote: “Educational psychologists describe a new kind of bullying.

The perpetrators are attractive, athletic, and academically accomplished — and comfortable enough around adults to know what they can and can’t get away with in school and online.

These bullies are so subtle and cunning it's hard for school staff to know if what looks like bullying really is, and what to do about it.”

Because these aggressors maintain high social standing and polite relationships with adults, their cruelty goes largely unchecked.

The victim's distress is written off as an overreaction, effectively normalizing mistreatment and erasing basic standards of decency within the school environment.

Teen dynamics as a mirror of the adult world

The breakdown of decency among adolescents cannot be viewed in isolation though; it directly reflects the broader adult society teenagers are inheriting. Social psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, authors of The Coddling of the American Mind, have argued that digital communication has fostered a widespread “call-out culture” reliant on public shaming. They observed that common-enemy group dynamics create environments where “almost anything a person says or does can lead to public shaming,” instilling constant fear and forcing individuals to censor themselves.Teenagers observe adults in politics, media, and public life receiving praise, clout, and financial rewards for hostile, mocking, and exclusionary behaviour. When adult public discourse rewards humiliation over empathy, adolescents adopt the same tactics to navigate their own social hierarchies.The digital schoolyard becomes a microcosm of a hyper-competitive, outrage-driven culture where empathy is framed as weakness and hostility is accepted as a necessary tool for self-preservation.

From King to Margaret Atwood

The persistent nature of adolescent malice has long been explored by authors who examine human behavior under group pressure. In the original text of Carrie, King observed how high school bullies evolve as they enter adulthood: “People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don’t stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.”King's insight here underlines that ageing does not automatically eliminate cruelty; increased intelligence simply provides adults with sophisticated rationalizations for hurting others. This aligns with William Golding's assessment of group behavior in Lord of the Flies, where he famously noted that "man produces evil as a bee produces honey".

In another classic, Cat's Eye, author Margaret Atwood presents a detailed portrait of relational aggression among young girls. Atwood illustrated how adolescent cruelty often operates under the guise of friendship and concern.The protagonist of Cat’s Eye, Elaine Risley, is systematically criticized and isolated by her close friend Cordelia. Atwood captures the psychological confusion of being targeted by peers who claim to care: “Cordelia is my friend.

She likes me, she wants to help me, they all do. They are my friends... I have never had any before and I’m terrified of losing them. I want to please. Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do.

Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.”

Dance of the macabre

Atwood demonstrated that relational cruelty forces the victim to internalize the mistreatment, continually searching for personal flaws to justify the bullies’ behaviour. Over time, the line between the victim and the perpetrator becomes blurred. In Cat’s Eye, Atwood’s protagonist later reflects: “I’m not afraid of seeing Cordelia. I’m afraid of being Cordelia. Because in some way we changed places, and I’ve forgotten when’.Towards the end, as the city of Chamberlain burns we watch Carrie dancing and laughing through the road as everything around her falls apart and dies. It’s not very different from real life scenarios played all over the world around us. But the question still remains.Why? How can so much devastation feel like child’s play? Flanagan offers a simple explanation. “I think it’s simply because they haven’t lived long enough to see the consequences of that cruelty.