What’s to blame for a generation’s desperation?

Youth is wasted on the young, for the most part, and thank God for that. There’s nothing grislier than a teenage girl aware of her hypnotic effect on men, or a youngster who begins his important thoughts: ‘As a young person, I…’ These days, though, it’s not youth that’s wasted on the young so much as life, which is an altogether more troubling problem.

Over the last year or so, I’d say a good third of the British kids I’ve met, from 15 to 25, have been suffering in some way from anxiety or depression. Often it’s obvious: severe anorexia; forearms calibrated with razor marks. The child says a wan hello, then slinks off to re-submerge in social media. The adults discuss the problem sotto voce. They’re game, modern mums, willing to face mental illness, but they’re baffled too: what’s up with these kids? They’re the best-fed, best–educated, luckiest humans that have ever been.