Scrolling in bedrooms after midnight a driver of youth joblessness

Anxiety linked to social media is driving economic inactivity among young people, according to the former minister tasked with looking at why almost a million are neither working nor learning.

Alan Milburn has told The Times newspaper that young people who are not in employment, education or training (Neet) “are not snowflakes”.

Instead, they are part of “a bedroom generation”, Mr Milburn said.

“They are sort of living in their bedrooms – they are on all the time, they’re never off.”

Young people’s sleep patterns and concentration levels are affected by social media, the former health secretary warned, and “that is having an impact on their ability to work”.

He said: “People say it’s a soft generation. My view unequivocally is that it isn’t. It is an anxious generation.”

Mr Milburn’s interim report into young Neets is expected to be published next week.

Every one of a group of ten 12- and 13-year-olds who engaged in his review said they went to bed between midnight and 3am because they are scrolling on their phones, The Times reported.

The report is also expected to warn that the welfare state and world of work were built for a different generation.

British businesses must also adapt to offer “a high level of pastoral care for this cohort of young people living with mental distress”, Mr Milburn said.

He added: “Employers have been on easy streets because they have been able to import migrant labour, oven-ready.

“That has fallen off the cliff.”

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), an estimated 12.8% of all people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were Neet in October to December 2025.

The total number of young people considered Neet was 957,000.

A report published earlier this week also identified social media as a driver of so-called quitting culture among young people.

The research, based on conversations with more than 400 young people across the UK, found some enjoyed the “dopamine hit of a new job but then get bored very quickly and want to move on”.

It also found “the promotion of online success leads to a quitting culture if things take time” and warned school has become a “Neet pipeline”, with exam pressure “consuming most of secondary school” and a lack of further or higher education opportunities beyond university study.

“The tragedy is that young people have so much potential, many of them are doing extraordinary things on the side, but their lives are filled with too many obstacles, too much heartache and too little agency,” the Inside the Mind of a Young Neet co-author Peter Hyman said.

MPs and peers debated social media harms at length when they considered the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, passed last month.

The Government has taken flexible powers in law to ban under 16s from the social media platforms thought to be the most harmful, but could also introduce curfews or scrolling limits on other websites.

A consultation to help the Government decide what action to take, titled Growing up in the Online World, is open until Tuesday.

Published: 23/05/2026 by Radio NewsHub