(Spoiler Alert: Revealing information about the show will be discussed in this article.)

Netflix’s recent hit-documentary, ‘Unknown Number: The Highschool Catfish’ is truly horrific.

Not in a violent way, though. ‘Unknown Number’ is no slasher flick nor war drama.

No, the horror factor in ‘Unknown Number’ comes in witnessing just how dramatically a parent fails her child.

The retelling of the true story begins with a frightening reminder of many teens’ relationships with their phones. “A lot of people spend up to 13 hours on their phone a day,” a high school girl reveals. “I really like going on my phone,” she continues. “I love going on TikTok and Snapchat.”

Even still, she tells us, “It’s crazy how having a phone could become the worst thing that happened to me.”

That “worst thing” begins in the small community of Beal City in central Michigan when someone with an unknown number texts a high school girl named Lauryn. It starts out innocently enough, maybe just a friend pranking her, she thinks. “Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you,” the message would read, even though he was not. A typical high school case of jealousy, everyone assumes.

Rather quickly, however, the texting increases to forty or more texts a day, and the messages turn from questionable, but forgivable, to disgusting and shockingly explicit.

For more than a year, the person hiding behind the unknown number levies dozens of strangely personal, profanity-laced attacks on Lauryn every day. Messages pop up that criticize her looks and her clothes. The stalker falsely claims to be sexually active with Lauryn’s boyfriend, Owen, providing graphic details about various acts.

In an especially terrible moment, we see the person even tell Lauryn to end her own life. “Kill yourself now b****, [Owen’s] life would be better if you were dead,” followed by another message: “DEAD #bangbang #suicide.”

Lauryn doesn’t hide what’s happening. She tells her parents, the school administrators, the police, and eventually the FBI. And while they try to figure out who is behind it – the authorities interview other high schoolers and even question whether Lauryn or Owen themselves are doing it in a plea for attention – the messages and impact continue. Lauryn and Owen’s relationship ends under the stress and every friend becomes a suspect. Her world, and the world of countless others, is upended by this anonymous attacker.

Thankfully, after many twists and turns we do learn the identity. The FBI’s investigation reveals that, of all people, Lauryn’s own mother, Kendra, was to blame.

This revelation is shocking. And it should be.

Lauryn’s mother, consistently and to an extreme degree, disregarded her responsibility to care for and love her daughter. The person Lauryn should have been able to trust more than anyone else was her own harasser. Kendra’s parental betrayal was not simply one of omission. She did not just sit back and watch as her daughter’s life slowly fell apart, she wrecked it herself.

“How could a mom do such a thing…to her own daughter?” a parent asks.

This is no minor failure. What we get in ‘Unknown Number’ is an extreme case of parental neglect and harm. It would be easy to watch this documentary and turn it off thinking, “Well, at least I’m not her!”

And while that’s true – this story reminds us of the massive responsibility and task of parenthood. The shock we feel when we learn it is Lauryn’s own mother? That hits us to the degree it does because of the sacredness of the bond between parent and child and because of how dramatically it was ignored.

Parents, we can either be a force for great joy or a source of incredible destruction in our children’s lives. The impact you have on your child is more than any other relationship he or she will ever have. Because of all this, it’s worth considering, every once in a while, how we’re doing as parents.

When asked why she harassed her daughter for months without end, Kendra claims that she simply lost herself in those moments. It wasn’t her, that’s not who she really is, she argues. But that excuse only highlights her failure: she never stopped long enough to reflect, reconsider, and change.

‘Unknown Number’ is a reminder that parents hold unmatched power in the lives of their children. We can wound, or we can give life. We can protect, or we can destroy. May we be found faithful in how we wield that power.

Photo Credit: YouTube/Netflix

The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.