5 things damaging young adults’ mental health that aren’t social media

This blog is part of a series written by Becky, junior designer at Rethink Mental Illness 

There is a lot of talk about the impact of social media on young people’s mental health. And rightly so.

With harmful algorithms designed to keep you hooked, the endless opportunity to compare your life to others, cyberbullying, exploitation and disrupted development, it’s clear that greater moderation and safety checks are needed to keep young people safe.  

But as a 24-year-old in the deep end of the ‘young people’ pool – typically defined as 18-25 – I'm lucky to be able to say that social media is not my biggest concern.  

I live with severe depression and anxiety, so limiting social media when possible is important for my mental health. If I see horrible things that upset me, I take a step back. If posts from my peers make my life feel not as great as someone else’s, I remind myself it’s just a slither of their life. It’s not reality.  

Plus, when curated well and used sparingly, social media can be a force for good. It can connect people, allow underrepresented communities to find like-minded people, and be a space for creativity, education, and silliness.  

For my age group, I can list way more pressures that are damaging our mental health in 2026 than social media: 

1. Loneliness
2. The rising cost of living
3. Lack of job opportunities  
4. Not being able to buy a house
5. The aftereffects of the pandemic 

I’ll go into each of these topics in more detail throughout this blog series, but what makes it even harder to navigate these tricky waters is the awful stereotype that my generation is “lazy”, “don’t want to work” and “not resilient”.  

I hate that way of thinking. Don’t all walks of life have lazy people in them? You can’t just label an entire generation as that.  

Especially within the current job market. More people are applying for jobs than ever, but we just can’t get them because we’re too young or too inexperienced or every applicant also has the degree we were promised would secure us employment.  

Not one of my friends has ever expressed to me that they don’t want to work. Everyone I know either has a job or has been working ridiculously hard to get one but can’t.  

We can’t make people hire us. It’s not up to us. If it were, then all my friends would have jobs that they want and deserve because living in a world of constant uncertainty is debilitating. 

We're not looking for a handout. We're looking for a system that genuinely recognises the current issues that affect us and helps create opportunities for us to build a stable future. Because at the moment our futures look far from stable.