Young Britons increasingly view the internet as a bad thing

An Ofcom survey published at the end of November shows that 18-34-year-olds in the UK are increasingly seeing life online as bad for society and their mental health.

Despite their increasingly negative view of the internet, young adults in the UK spend significantly more personal time online than older age groups.

Faith in the Internet is Fading Among Young Brits

By SA Mathieson, as published by The Register on 19 December 2025

Young Brits are souring on the internet, with increasing numbers seeing it as damaging to society and their mental health, according to the latest research published by Ofcom.

The UK’s communications regulator found that in June 2025, just a third of those aged 18-34 agreed the internet is good for society, down from 42 per cent a year earlier. While this fell for older age groups as well, it did so less sharply (34 per cent versus 38 per cent in 2024), meaning those aged 55 and above are proportionately more positive than younger people about the internet’s impact on civilisation.

The research also found that more young adults disagreed that the internet helps their mental health than agreed, reversing the previous year’s findings. In June 2025, 35 per cent of young adults disagreed that being online had a positive overall effect on their emotional well-being, while 31 per cent agreed. In June 2024, 28 per cent disagreed and 39 per cent agreed.

The questions were part of annual research carried out in the summer by pollster YouGov with 7,340 adults of all ages for Ofcom’s Annual Online Nation report.

Despite their increasing negativity, young adults in the UK spend significantly more time online than older age groups, averaging six hours and 20 minutes a day on personal (rather than work) devices, up ten minutes over the prior 12 months and much higher than the four hours and 30 minutes for all adults.

So why are many of these digital natives, born between Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s creation of the first web browser and server in 1990 and Apple’s launch of the first iPhone in 2007, losing faith in the internet?

One reason may be that their online experiences differ significantly from those of their elders, including more material chosen by algorithms than actively selected by users.

A section of the research on potentially harmful online encounters found that younger adults were most likely to have experienced these on Instagram, followed by TikTok. Overall, Facebook was the place people were most likely to encounter such material, but the likelihood of this increased with age. Among all young adults, 47 per cent of potentially harmful encounters came from scrolling a feed, compared with just 26 per cent for 55s and over.

Further reading:

• US teens not only love AI, but also let it rot their brains
• UK Lords take aim at Ofcom’s ‘child-protection’ upgrades to Online Safety Act
• Pornhub pulls out of Florida, VPN demand ‘surges 1150%’
• The UK Online Safety Act is about censorship, not safety

Another reason may be increasing interest in how the internet can damage young people, even if this tends to focus on those a bit younger than the group in question.

This year’s Ofcom research took place a few months after the March launch of Adolescence, a UK drama about a teenage murder suspect who was radicalised online, which was Netflix’s most-watched show worldwide in the first half of this year. It was also shortly before Ofcom started enforcing the UK’s Online Safety Act, which attempts to restrict content for those under 16, and Australia attempted to stop the same age group from operating social media accounts.

Ofcom did find that young adults are more likely than older groups to manage their internet use by disabling notifications, using Do Not Disturb settings, pausing use of services and deleting apps.

A fifth felt they did not have a good balance between online and offline, compared with 13 per cent of all adults. However, the group was less likely than older adults to report or flag potentially harmful content, with more than half choosing not to act on this type of material, saying they didn’t consider it to be serious or harmful enough.

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