Problems with housing, jobs and technology have dented young people’s confidence in the future and each other

Hope, Raye told a crowd at Reading festival on Saturday, was the theme of a set inspired by her second album. Having established through a show of hands that most of the audience had just done their GCSEs, and after recounting her own rocky road to stardom, the 28-year-old singer led a series of upbeat chants of “it’s gonna be all right”.

For anyone who thinks adolescence ought to be a time of optimism, it was a charming spectacle. But a new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank paints a much gloomier picture. Building on existing evidence of declining wellbeing, such as Alan Milburn’s report on young people who are not in education or work, the IPPR’s researchers found that 11- to 24-year-olds in England (gen Z and older members of gen Alpha) are increasingly lonely. They have fewer friends than young people in the past and are less contented with those they do have. One in 20 say that they have no friends at all. A series of interviews produced worrying evidence of their lack of confidence about the future.

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