Britain's youth are obsessed with porn, stuck in childhood bedrooms into their 20s and struggling to form relationships, new report says

Britain's youth remain marooned in their childhood bedrooms into their twenties, struggling to form relationships, obsessed with pornography and battling mounting levels of anxiety.That is the bleak picture painted by a new report on the 'chasm' which is opening up between the sexes among the under-30s, leading to declining levels of marriage, sexual activity, fertility and happiness.Analysis by the Centre For Social Justice (CSJ) found that men are 26 times more likely to be living with their mother by their 25th birthday than with a spouse.The report, Relationship Recession: Pornography, identifies the proliferation of explicit content as a key driver for the collapse in relationships, compounded by the rising cost of living and high levels of youth unemployment.It says: 'One of the harms of watching pornography is the deeper relational damage to trust, intimacy, and communication.....It is now sufficiently prevalent, particularly across the younger generation, that even comparatively small effects become meaningful when reproduced across millions of people.'Polling for the report found that more than 18 per cent of Britons aged 18-34 – nearly three million – say that they have considered uploading adult content to OnlyFans or similar sites, where subscribers sign up to see adult pictures or videos posted by individuals or couples.The report details the wider societal and economic changes which have caused a rapid rise in the number of young people remaining in the family home into early adulthood: the proportion of 20-34-year-olds doing so has increased from 20 per cent in 2008 to nearly 30 per cent now. Men are significantly more likely to do so: a third of young men, compared with one quarter of young women.This has coincided with a steep decline in marriages among the demographic, with the rate of men and women who marry by the age of 30 falling by 90 per cent over the last 50 years. For those in their early twenties it is down by more than 97 per cent. Britain's youth remain marooned in their childhood bedrooms into their twenties, struggling to form relationships, obsessed with pornography and battling mounting levels of anxiety, a new report saysThe report says: 'Fifty years ago, most men were married by their 25th birthday. Today, as a young man approaches 25, he is 26 times more likely to live with his mum than his wife. In England and Wales, there are now around 3.7 million fewer married people under 30 than in 1976, despite the greater number of young people. The number has fallen from 4.5 million to approximately 790,000.'Sex is also going out of fashion among the younger generation, with the proportion of 16-24-year-olds who describe themselves as sexually active dropping from 68 per cent to 44 per cent over the last seven years.The fertility rate in England and Wales is at a record low of 1.39 children per woman, with the average age at which women become mothers increasing from 23 in the 1970s to 31 now.In addition, the report paints a worrying picture of increasingly isolated teenagers struggling with their mental health. It says that the proportion of 15-year-olds spending time with friends every evening has dropped from 14 per cent to 2 per cent since the turn of the millennium.While parents are likely to point to the demands of schoolwork and fears for teenagers' safety as the reason, the report argues that such extensive bedroom-dwelling is not healthy: it cites a claim that one quarter of 17-19-year-olds in the UK now have a 'probable mental disorder' of some sort.It argues that the changing nature of romantic interactions has played a part in the 'chasm' between the genders – with meetings much less likely to take place in the pub and more likely to happen on dating apps.The number of pubs has fallen by 29 per cent since 1990, and over one quarter of late-night venues in total have disappeared since the Covid pandemic. One in four young people do not drink at all, up from one in seven in 2017.The rise of working from home has also made office romances less likely, while there are 1,000 fewer youth clubs today than there were 15 years ago.Just one in 20 couples now meet while 'out and about'. Online dating dominates, but is 'lopsided': The ratio of online daters is two men for every one woman.The report says: 'Modern life is more complex than ever. Housing, social media and technology, political ruptures, spiritual disenfranchisement, a climate crisis, the cost of living, even the instability of old institutions such as marriage and the family seem to be creaking under the pressure of the modern world. All these and more undoubtedly play a role in why it feels hard for young people today.'Perpetuating this, according to the CSJ, is the wide use of pornography – particularly among men. Twenty seven per cent of men watch pornography several times a week or more, compared with just 5 per cent of women.The report also highlights the secrecy which surrounds the issue: nearly half of adults – 47 per cent – have never discussed with any partner whether either of them uses porn, and recommends that the issue should be discussed between GPs and patients and be included in school sex education classes.The CSJ quotes TV presenter and actor Ore Oduba, who has previously spoken publicly about his addiction to pornography, on how the growth in the use of pornography has dovetailed with the cost-of-living crisis to create the OnlyFans phenomenon.Mr Oduba says: 'Sites like OnlyFans generate £5.4 billion a year, popularising to young women that adult content creation is an easy and frictionless way to earn a living. It is not surprising, then, that more than two and a half million young people have considered using OnlyFans themselves. Yet in plain sight, these same sites promote the objectification and monetisation of, and sense of entitlement to, women's bodies.'Over decades the industry of pornography and its hypersexualised subsidiaries have proliferated within our culture, hidden in plain sight on our social media feeds. They have set dangerous trends in the sex lives of young people, depleted the mental health of those struggling with addiction and contributed to once unfathomable behaviour both online and in the real world. Porn isn't going anywhere. On the contrary, its popularity is increasing - sharply. Through artificial intelligence, its potential harm is multiplied.'