The government’s jobs tsar has warned Britain faces an “economic catastrophe” from youth unemployment as young people have been “rewired” by smartphones.
Alan Milburn was appointed by Sir Keir Starmer as chairman of the Young People and Work Report as hundreds of thousands of 16-24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training (Neets).
His interim report, set be published next week, will suggest that the “rising tide of mental ill-health, anxiety, depression, neurodiversity” is the main reason for high economic inactivity.
Speaking to The Times, the former health secretary said young people “are not snowflakes or faking it”, but the rise in these issues could be linked to growing up in a digital age on social media.
“The system is trapping people in worklessness rather than enabling them into work,” Mr Milburn told the paper. “We’re at a risk of just writing a whole generation off.”
The research also described a “bedroom generation” with many of those who had left school at 16 having spent months or even years at home, much of it online.
“They are on all the time, they’re never off,” Mr Milburn added. “[Social media] is leading to some evidence of functional impairment, changing their sleep patterns, concentration levels. That is having an impact on their ability to work.
“They are not snowflakes. People say it’s a soft generation. My view unequivocally is that it isn’t. It is an anxious generation.”
The report is expected to say that the welfare state was “built for a different era and must change now if we are to avoid a generational, societal and economic catastrophe”.
It adds that young people have “grown up in a digital world that has rewired how they communicate, form relationships and manage stress. They have fewer experiences of workplaces and they present with higher levels of anxiety and depression.”
Mr Milburn’s interim report will say that if the problem is not tackled, young people could be stuck on benefits for life which could impact economic growth.
There were 729,000 young people aged 16 to 24 who were unemployed between January to March this year – 110,000 more than last year. The total number of young people considered Neet was 957,000, according to the Office for National Statistics between October and December 2025.
A report published earlier this week, which will form part of the Milburn review, also identified social media as a driver of so-called quitting culture among young people.
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.
