The number of young people with no close friends has risen fivefold since 2014 as a result of growing up in a “bleak world” dominated by austerity, the pandemic and social media.
New research paints a sobering picture of how 11- to 24-year-olds in England are increasingly lonely, isolated and “disconnected” from themselves, peers and wider society.
“Young people in England are becoming dramatically more isolated from one another, with one in 20 now reporting that they have no close friends at all, up from one in 100 in 2014,” according to a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank called “the loneliest generation”.
Among the same age group to which that friendlessness applied – 16- to 21-year-olds – the proportion with at least three close friends also fell significantly. The number saying they had that many friends fell from 85% in 2012-14 to 72% in 2023-25, IPPR found.
The report rejected the idea that today’s generation was less resilient than its predecessors. Instead, it said youth club closures, unaffordable housing, the popularity of TikTok and a loss of self-esteem among young people had contributed to a recent sharp decline in their mental wellbeing.
Young people’s relationships also appeared less strong than before. The proportion of 14- and 15-year-olds who were completely or very happy with their friendships fell from 86% to 76% between the periods 2012-14 and 2023-25.
“The foundations of a good adolescence have eroded. A generation are coming of age in the shadow of a digital childhood, a pandemic and the erosion of the services and spaces that once helped them navigate the journey to adulthood,” the report said.
At the same time, young people’s transition to adulthood had been blocked and their childhood prolonged. “The traditional indicators of early adulthood are all happening much later, leaving young people in a longer, hollower and more precarious adolescence,” said IPPR.
According to the report, buying and renting a house had become harder, with the average age of a first-time buyer now 34 and nearly one in five young people spending half of their income on rent.
The reduced number of 16- to 24-year-olds starting an apprenticeship and the growth of “Neets” – young adults who are not in education, employment or training – was also deemed to be preventing them from becoming independent adults.
“Ever more young people are stuck in limbo: they are no longer children and yet are unable to access adult life,” the report added.
“Kids aren’t snowflakes. This is a rational response to a bleak world we have left for them”, said Avnee Morjaria, an associate director with the thinktank.
“We have stripped away too many of the places, services and routes into adulthood that help young people build confidence, connection and hope,” she said.
The IPPR based its findings on interviews with 150 young people and analysis of official data, including the National Centre for Social Research’s Understanding Society dataset.
Big changes in politics, society and technology have resulted in many young people feeling “disconnected from themselves. They no longer feel they have the support they need to realise their big ambitions. When they reflect on their lives, they conclude they have little control over what happens next,” said the IPPR report.
Disconnection was said to be reflected in the rise of doomscrolling – “a fundamentally solitary activity [that] has become the daily pastime of a generation”.
The report said young people’s disconnection with society was illustrated by their belief that health, education and support services were not set up to serve their needs.
The IPPR report added: “Today’s disconnection is the result of political choices made by adults in the name of neoliberalism. Our young people have grown up in a country reshaped by ideology that professes that ‘there is no such thing as society’.
The disconnection young people describe can trace its origins back to a shift away from collectivism and towards the privatisation and marketisation of public services and assets, the adoption of identity politics over the politics of inclusion and a deference to unaccountable tech oligarchs.”
The IPPR’s findings echoed research carried out last December by Prof Eamon McCrory, the chief executive of the Anna Freud mental health charity in London, which blamed “social thinning” – the loss of in-person social interaction between adolescents – as a primary driver of the pronounced rise in anxiety, depression, self-harm and other mental health problems among young people, especially girls and young women.
“A profound thinning in the real-world social ecology – the social relationships, spaces and infrastructures – that once supported adolescent development” was as important in explaining the collapse in young people’s mental health as their immersion in digital technology, he argued.
