When Fiction Feels Like Fact: Why Stories Shape Our Real-World Beliefs

Stories like "Adolescence" trigger strong emotions, making them more persuasive than data and powerful enough to influence parental decisions and policy debates.

Key Points

• Stories are powerful tools for belief formation because they engage emotion and reduce cognitive resistance and critical thinking.

• Metaphors and symbolic imagery activate our existing mental models, bypass rational analysis, and increase our vulnerability to persuasion.

• Fictional narratives can be mistaken for evidence when they "ring true" and reflect personal fears.

• Parenting and policy decisions can be shaped by stories when emotional memory becomes a reference point for decision-making.

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A few weeks ago, I shared research out of the University of South Florida showing that smartphone use might not be the monster under the bed when it comes to teen well-being (Martin et al., 2025). The study found a positive correlation between smartphone ownership and mental health among kids. Many factors were at play, of course, but it seemed worth highlighting in a cultural moment where social media is often treated as a universal toxin.

I wasn’t prepared for the flood of outrage. Some people accused me of being in the pocket of Big Tech. (I had nothing to do with the study other than post it.) Others dismissed the findings outright. But one comment really stuck: “You just need to watch Adolescence. That show tells you everything you need to know.”

Adolescence is a British Netflix crime drama about a 13-year-old arrested for murdering a classmate, which explores the impact of toxic masculinity, the dangers of online culture, and the pressures young men face from social media and their peers. Heavy stuff.

Honestly, I get it. I've raised six kids and have four grandchildren. Like all parents, my emotional radar is always on high alert, and when a story feels true, it lands with force. Still, it’s a bit jarring to see a fictional Netflix series offered as definitive evidence of online dangers.

But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Since its release, Adolescence has been shared, discussed, and cited by parent groups and even in some policy circles. It’s fiction—but its impact is real.

How the Brain Turns Stories Into Beliefs

The brain doesn’t do a great job of separating dramatized experience from real-life emotion. That’s because feelings are genuine, whether sparked by a real event or a fictional one. When something feels true, it becomes part of how we understand the world.

We shouldn’t scoff at that. Humans are wired for story. Stories give structure to chaos. They let us explore our fears and make sense of the unthinkable. But as media gets more immersive, emotionally intelligent, and persuasive, we need to get better at recognizing how easily we’re pulled in.

Instead of just asking, “Is this true?” we should be asking, “Why does this feel true to me?” Because there’s a cost to letting unexamined stories steer our thinking.

Adolescence: A Story That Hits Close to Home

Adolescence is a gripping, limited series that follows 13-year-old Jamie Miller, arrested for murdering a classmate. The series is visually compelling. Its realism is enhanced by the excellent acting and single-camera, continuous-shot production techniques that make it feel like a real-time crime drama as it explores the impact on Jamie and his family, masculinity, online radicalization, and the challenges of parenting in a digital world. It was inspired by two disparate but frightening phenomena: an increase in juvenile knife crimes in the U.K. and the rising influence of "manosphere" personalities.

The drama effectively uses “shock and awe” to highlight the importance of addressing the root causes of teen violence, the online world of misogyny, and the need for open communication about mental health, particularly for boys.

However, it is not a documentary; it’s fiction.

Still, many parents treat it like a case study. They post scenes in parenting forums. They quote it in conversations about online safety and adolescent vulnerability.

When Fiction Feels More Real Than Data

Jerome Bruner (1986) argued that we think in two modes: the logical-scientific and the narrative. Logic lets us analyze. Narrative lets us feel. It gives shape to intentions, emotions, and cause-and-effect relationships, especially in emotionally charged situations like parenting.

Narrative transportation describes the sensation of being fully immersed in a story (Green & Brock, 2000). Our critical thinking declines, and our "willing suspension of disbelief" increases. On the upside, this makes entertainment more enjoyable. The more emotionally engaging the story, the more we are transported, the more it activates our empathy, and the more it feels true. The downslide, however, is that an emotionally immersive experience reduces counter-arguing and makes us more susceptible to the story's message. In short, it shifts our perception of the real world.

When Adolescence shows a teen unraveling online, it’s not just entertainment. It’s a visualization of real fears. As parents or grandparents, we don’t watch passively. We wonder, “Could this happen to my kid?”

From Screen Time to Screen Bans

This emotional resonance has real-world consequences. Parents restrict screen use not based on longitudinal data, but on what feels urgent. Advocacy groups latch onto compelling narratives to push for regulation. And social media itself amplifies the most dramatic and frightening portrayals.

None of this is irrational. It’s human. When we witness a powerful story, like the young Jamie Miller out of control, egged on by social pressures and algorithmic exposure, our brain forms what neuroscientist Antonio Damasio (1995) called “somatic markers.” These emotional memories shape how we assess future risks.

And when fear kicks in, the amygdala gets the wheel. As stress rises, our brain shifts away from deliberation and toward reaction (Clark, 1995). We begin to assess threats based on what is vivid and emotionally charged, not what is common or statistically likely. Repetitive coverage, sensational events, and our tendency to seek information that reinforces our beliefs confirm our assumptions that a problem is widespread.

That’s why a show like Adolescence, even though it presents extreme outcomes, can seem more “real” than aggregate research. Studies showing that most teens report neutral or positive online experiences (e.g., Odgers & Jensen, 2020) rarely make it into our emotional memory.

Metaphors That Stick

One of the reasons media has this staying power is that it traffics in symbols. Stories use metaphor not just to entertain, but to encode meaning. These metaphors efficiently convey a large amount of information by linking new data with the existing mental models and emotions stored in our brains, creating new and sticky metaphors and cognitive shortcuts. From camera angles to concrete images, metaphors can translate abstract concepts, such as digital pressure, into vivid and tangible ones, like suffocation or a pressure cooker, thereby enhancing memory and framing meaning, bypassing rational filters and settling into long-term memory.

In Adolescence, visual motifs—like isolation, pressure, and loss—aren’t just aesthetic choices. They create cognitive shortcuts that map abstract anxieties onto concrete experiences. The Social Dilemma was full of metaphors that framed social media use as dangerous, with imagery such as a teen hanging from meat hooks, AI as manipulative, agentic avatars reveling in their powers and intentionally triggering notifications, and phones as dopamine-activating slot machines. All graphic but effective metaphors for the loss of autonomy and danger in algorithm-driven spaces.

When Stories Go Transmedia

What happens when a show doesn’t just live on Netflix but starts spilling into other parts of life? When shows like Adolescence move across platforms, igniting conversations among parents and across social media, they create a transmedia experience. The audience members are no longer just consumers. They become participants in meaning creation, increasing the story’s personal relevance and amplifying its emotional impact.

A fictional show like Adolescence may spur a news story, review, blog post, or Facebook discussion; it may inspire a YouTube video, be shared among friend groups, and become a topic at the dinner table. The more a story moves across platforms, the more real it feels, its potency increasing as it travels, validated through repetition, conversation, personal interpretations, and parental fears. We’re not just watching the story—we’re co-constructing its truth.

When Stories Stand in for Evidence

When storytelling mirrors our biggest fears, the metaphors become truth-adjacent—emotionally real, even if not factually so. Psychologist and former colleague Donald Polkinghorne (1988) defined this as "narrative knowing” when we prioritize coherence and plausibility over verification. We do this all the time, since most of what we know, we learn from stories —real and fictional, firsthand and anecdotal. So when someone cites Adolescence as evidence, it is a way of expressing their emotional and social truth. They may, in fact, not be confused between fact and fiction at all.

Today’s high production values, natural dialogue, and emotional resonance create perceived realism, continually making fiction feel "more real" than fact. However, this isn’t all that new. The 1938 radio adaptation of Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds is a well-known example of how storytelling validated by the familiar format (metaphor) of a news bulletin could override critical thinking and trigger real-world reactions when many listeners thought a Martian invasion was actually happening and fled their homes.

A Final Word—From One Parent to Another

If you’ve ever made a parenting decision based on a gut feeling, you’re not alone. I’ve been there. We all want to protect the people we love. Stories help us imagine danger—and imagining danger is part of how we try to prevent it.

But it’s also how we end up mistaking a fictional narrative for universal truth. Not because we’re careless, but because we’re human. When a story reflects our deepest worries, it bypasses logic and settles in as emotional truth.

We shouldn't be surprised when popular media is presented as evidence. We’re storytelling animals. Stories create meaning, give form to fear, and clarity to confusion. They help us talk about hard things. However, as the media becomes more emotionally charged, realistic, and persuasive, we need to recognize our susceptibility to narrative persuasion.

When narratives drive decisions about parenting, education, or public policy, we need to hold those stories up to the light and ask better questions and go beyond simply asking, "Is this true?" We need to ask, "Why does this feel true to me?" If we don't, we're vulnerable to those who tell stories to influence our behavior and manipulate our beliefs.

References

Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674029019

Clark, G. A. (1995). Emotional learning: Fear and loathing in the amygdala. Current Biology, 5(3), 246–248. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0960-9822(95)00050-9

Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes' error: Emotion, reason and the human brain. Penguin Putnam.

Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701

Martin, J. D., Song, S. W., Rote, W. R., Bakour, C., Rance, L. T., Scacco, J. M., & Marcus, S. (2025). The life in media survey: A baseline study of digital media use and well-being among 11- to 13-year-olds. . http://www.lifeinmediasurvey.org.

Odgers, C. L., & Jensen, M. R. (2020). Annual research review: Adolescent mental health in the digital age: Facts, fears, and future directions. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 61(3), 336–348. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13190

Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. SUNY Press.