“After decades of community decline and 15 months of rolling lockdowns, young people have fewer friends, trust people less, and are more alienated from their communities than ever before.”
Will Tanner, Director UK Onward
Football has captured the headlines so much over the past fortnight that you might not have seen the headline article in The Sunday Times on 4 July ‘Untouched: £500 million in children’s savings’, or this morning's Telegraph article 'Teenagers lose out on £3bn sitting in child trust funds'. This is confirmation of the challenge to connect millions of young adults with their Child Trust Funds over the next seven years.
Money, however, is not the only challenge faced by young adults: a report from the Onward think-tank has drawn attention to a serious reduction in the number of their close relationships, with a fifth of adults under 35 saying that they have only one - or no - close friends.
So in this commentary we consider how the combination of digital communication and the pandemic have handicapped young people’s ability to socialise, and the opportunities that can help them address this problem.
The Onward report ‘Age of Alienation’ speaks of an almost isolated generation.
In March 2021, the proportion of 18-34 year olds reporting one or fewer close friends was three times the level (21%) than it was in 2011-12 (7%). Meanwhile those aged 18 - 24 were three times more likely (48%) to distrust their neighbours than those aged 65 and over (15%).
Some might claim that the pandemic bears most responsibility, and it certainly has significantly reduced social interaction at this vital formative stage. Anyone with family or friends starting university over this past year will know that most students have been confined to their halls of residence, and to digital lectures/tutorials; universities have been keen to pull in their fees, but have done little to encourage social interaction.
However, there's no doubt that teenage culture has also become obsessed with digital communication through social media, which is a very poor substitute for building real relationships - please see our comment on 11th March 2019, well before the pandemic took hold.
The Onward paper makes an important proposal to address this, calling for a national civic service for people aged between 18 and 35 which would encourage every young person to complete ten days of volunteering each year. Volunteers would be incentivised by civic rewards that could be redeemed against student loans or training costs. Community service was also the key recommendation in our 11 March 2019 comment.
This proposal merits serious consideration, because community action is one of the best ways for not only getting to know others but also learning the value of doing things selflessly for others.
So far as 18 year-olds are concerned, there's a major opportunity to link this with doing something special for your own age group: helping others to find their Child Trust Funds. The Sunday Times article laid bare the huge opportunity being missed by young adults as a result of these ‘lost’ accounts.
The Share Foundation, which has been working hard with its campaign for the past three years, is happy for the materials developed for its virtual events, to be used by volunteers across the United Kingdom, and is encouraging teachers to draw attention to this challenge: not only in preparation for the summer holidays, but also within their curriculum planning for the next academic year (2021/22). Here are links to the three short videos and background notes for these events: please do contact me at [email protected] if you need any further information:
What is a CTF, and why should I have one?
How can I make the most of my money going forwards?
These opportunities, to volunteer and to use the challenge of re-linking Child Trust Funds, provide a way forward from the isolation of the pandemic and from digital addiction.
Of course, there are other ways: the euphoria which has surrounded football over the past 2-3 weeks is one such example. However we need to find local, calm ways of building community for the young so that we not only see quality relationships being formed, but also keep the spread of the virus in check. We need to remember that vaccination rates are not so high in this age group, and that Long Covid remains a threat for the young as well as the old.
The key point is that we cannot allow this ‘Age of Alienation’ to become entrenched in young adults - we need to find ways which lead on to fulfilment throughout adult life.
Gavin Oldham OBE
Share Radio