The basic idea that the next generation will have it better than previous ones is a founding belief for most of us. A new piece of research published today by the John Smith Centre, however, shows that young people today no longer believe it to be true.

Asked which political leader best represents British values, 45 per cent failed to name any current leader

The UK Youth Poll, sponsored by Nationwide Building Society, is one of the largest pieces of research into ‘Gen Z’ across the UK, involving 2,000 16–29-year-olds, and more than 200 individual interviews and focus groups.

The overwhelming message we heard back suggests that young people are losing faith with an economic and political system that simply isn’t delivering on their basic needs.

We heard from a trainee nurse in Bristol, sharing a house with five others, paying £800 for a room, who wanted to know why some of her colleagues couldn’t find a job, and would have to work in Tesco’s after they qualified.

There was the dance teacher in Glasgow who spoke about how graduates had been “sold a dream”, done the right thing, got an education, only to then discover that the promised land of jobs and rising wages wasn’t available.

Or the young student who summed up the response of older generations: “be grateful and stop buying avocado on toast”.

As another put it, the “social contract” between young and old is fraying, and dangerously so.

Take just one headline finding. We asked young people whether they thought their lives would be better than their parents’. Last year, 63 per cent agreed. In just a year that figure has crashed to just 36 per cent.

Or another: only a quarter of young people now believe their generation is being treated fairly compared to older generations.

What might explain the sudden collapse in faith? One word: economics. Our poll is published as figures show that 732,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are unemployed, 99,000 more than the previous year. Nearly a million 16–24-year-olds are classified as “NEET” – not in employment, education or training.

Not surprisingly given this backdrop, our poll shows that financial worries, job insecurity and housing instability are the three biggest worries that young people now have.

Add on their fear about the impact of AI (young people see its impact on jobs as AI’s biggest threat) and it is little wonder that this generation increasingly feels that the dice are loaded against them.

Hearteningly our poll suggests that this isn’t weakening young people’s basic belief in democratic values. Compared to last year, fewer now say they would prefer to live in a dictatorship. But democracy is on notice.

Only 13 per cent disagree with the statement “Democracy in Britain is in trouble” and only 16 per cent agree that school has prepared them adequately to make informed political decisions; 53 per cent agree with the view that politics in the UK has become too divisive. And asked which political leader best represents British values, 45 per cent failed to name any current leader, saying either none of the above or that they did not know.

Perhaps most pertinently, given the geopolitical instability in which we live, 50 per cent said outright that there were no circumstances in which they would take up arms to fight for the UK. Doubtless some will see this as further evidence of young peoples’ avocado-eating tendencies. Young people might well put it differently – why fight for a country that isn’t fighting for you?

Despite everything, this generation of young people continue to hope and want to serve

What, then, are the takeaways from this year’s survey?

Firstly and most obviously, it underlines the need for governments across the UK to focus on delivering economic growth. It isn’t the influence of Andrew Tate or the war in Iran which is keeping young people awake at night: it’s the fear that, despite having done everything they’ve been asked to do, and despite many getting thousands of pounds in debt to service a university degree, the prospect of a secure job and house of their own feels utterly unattainable.

Secondly, there is a need for our politics to give young people more of a voice and a sense of agency: something that is done by them, not for them. We recommend in our report today that the teaching of Civics is something that should be firmly embedded in schools’ curricula. And young people should also be offered more opportunities to claim stake in society – for example, through a new national volunteering scheme similar to those that exist in the USA and France. Young people in the UK want to serve and they want to get involved. They just lack the opportunities to do so.

That leads us to our final point. In focus groups, many young people told us that they are conscious of negative commentary about their generation. They have grown accustomed to hearing Gen Z being described as lazy ‘snowflakes’. To negatively caricature millions of young people in the same light is to add insult to the economic injury that is being perpetrated upon them. The UK’s older generations need to show some empathy by listening to them just a little better. They might even choose to take direction from young people too.

The nurse we spoke to was looking forward to dedicating her life to the NHS, serving patients.

The dance teacher was volunteering in her spare time, passing on her passion to children in local schools.

Despite everything, this generation of young people continue to hope and want to serve – it is time the rest of the country follow their lead.