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Students at Tresham College in Kettering have rejected the 'snowflake' label, saying their generation faces lockdowns, climate anxiety and digital pressures older generations never knew. An independent review led by Professor Peter Fonagy backs them up, finding real rises in anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders — and concluding it is "harder to be young". The debate now turns on whether the answer is more support, more resilience, or both.
They are the generation that grew up with lockdowns, climate anxiety and a smartphone in every pocket — and they are tired of being called snowflakes. At Tresham College in Kettering, students have pushed back hard against the label, just as an independent review of youth mental health has confirmed that growing up today really is harder than it used to be.
Professor Peter Fonagy, who heads the review into mental health, ADHD and autism, found a genuine rise in anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders among young people. His verdict was blunt: it is "harder to be young". The review was ordered nine months ago by the then health secretary Wes Streeting, and its findings are set to shape a debate about how Britain cares for the minds of its young people.
"Snowflake" began as a description of something delicate and unique. In Oxford dictionaries it has hardened into a very different meaning: a person considered excessively sensitive or easily offended — in one academic formulation, "overly sensitive, easily offended and narcissistically entitled". The term "generation snowflake" has been used for a decade to imply that today's young adults melt under pressure that earlier generations supposedly took in their stride.
Abbie, an 18-year-old second-year childcare student at Tresham, finds the label "appalling". "Everybody goes through so much that is behind closed doors, I've gone through so much, and to be called a snowflake is appalling," she said. For her, the digital world is part of the problem: "Technology is really scary, you can do anything at any fingertip."
Her classmate Jack, 17, studying art and design, rejected the idea that his generation crumbles easily. "Most of my generation are not snowflakes we actually have a lot of problems we need fixing, and we worry about a lot of stuff," he said. "We've been through some of the worst things humanity has ever experienced like Covid-19." Mia, also 17, pointed to a pile-up of pressures unique to her cohort: "We've been through so much as a generation, because we had lockdown all these crises and we've got the rise in climate change and how our earth isn't going to survive."
The students' frustration is not just rhetoric. NHS survey data reported this summer shows that more than one in four young people in England — 25.8% of 16- to 24-year-olds — now lives with a common mental health condition, up by more than a third from 18.9% in 2014. The figures, reported from the adult psychiatric morbidity survey, show the burden falling hardest on young women, with 36.1% affected compared with 16.3% of young men.
The picture is bleaker still at the sharp end. Self-harm rates have quadrupled since 2000 and risen from 6.4% in 2014 to 10.3% in 2024, with the highest rates among 16- to 24-year-olds at 24.6% — and 31.7% among young women. More than one in four adults has had suicidal thoughts during their lifetime, including about a third of 16- to 24-year-olds.
Demand on services tells the same story. Children's mental health referrals in England topped one million in 2024-25, according to the Children's Commissioner, with anxiety the most common referral reason at 16% of all referrals, followed by neurodevelopmental conditions and suspected autism. Referrals for anxiety alone jumped by more than 17,000 in a single year. Children from more deprived areas were more likely to be referred — a reminder that mental ill health tracks the same fault lines as every other health inequality.
!Students seated in a university lecture hall Credit: WWELNUR, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Not everyone is convinced the answer is more diagnosis and more treatment. Patrick Spencer, the Conservative MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, told the BBC that "some of the slightly more traditional principles of resilience have been lost somewhat in this debate". His argument — that young people need grit as well as help — will resonate with anyone who worries the country is medicalising normal adolescent turbulence.
It is a genuine tension, and it sits at the heart of the Fonagy review. On one side, the data shows suffering on a scale that can hardly be dismissed as fragility: a doubling of distress in a decade is not a branding problem. On the other, there is a legitimate fear that labelling every anxious teenager as ill risks turning ordinary growing pains into a clinical pathway. Both sides claim to speak for young people's best interests, which is why the review's conclusions matter beyond Westminster. The policy menu is already widening — from wellbeing spaces in colleges to a proposed midnight social media curfew for teenagers.
Rosie Wrighting, Labour MP for Kettering and herself 29 — a member of Generation Z — has been making the case for an intergenerational conversation instead of a shouting match. Her point, echoed by the Tresham students, is that dismissing young people's struggles as snowflake behaviour shuts down exactly the dialogue that might help.
At Tresham College, the response has been practical rather than rhetorical. The college has opened The Haven, a dedicated wellbeing space where students can decompress and seek support. Maggie Evans, the college's Special Educational Needs Emotional Wellbeing Support Facilitator, said: "If students feel safe, happy and included within our campus, they are more likely to achieve academically to their full potential."
The logic is hard to argue with: a teenager who feels safe learns better. It is also a quieter, more local answer to a national crisis — no waiting list, no referral threshold, just a room. Campaigners who want the system to warn about vaping's toll on children and those backing better screening for men like Chris Hoy are making the same bet from different angles: that meeting people where they are works better than telling them to toughen up.
The Fonagy review now moves from diagnosis to prescription. Its findings will feed into the government's promised cross-government mental health strategy for England, which ministers say will transform mental health care, backed by a record £16.1 billion invested in NHS mental health services this year, according to the Department of Health and Social Care's response to the Children's Commissioner's report.
The harder question is whether policy can keep up with the numbers. Referrals are rising faster than funding, waiting lists remain long, and young people themselves are asking for something simpler than a strategy document: to be taken seriously. Charities and NHS resources already signpost where help exists — NHS pages for young people in crisis list YoungMinds, Childline, Kooth and Samaritans among the routes to support — but signposting only works if the services on the other end can cope.
Abbie, Jack and Mia will be adults by the time any strategy beds in. Whether they remember their college years as the moment the system started listening, or as the moment it called them snowflakes instead, is the review's real test. The full discussion airs on BBC Politics East on Sunday 4 October at 10:00 GMT on BBC One in the East of England.
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The term is used to describe young adults seen as less resilient and more easily offended than previous generations — a label the Tresham College students reject. In Oxford dictionaries it has settled into a meaning roughly equivalent to "excessively sensitive".
Professor Peter Fonagy, head of the independent review into mental health, ADHD and autism, found a genuine rise in anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders among young people, concluding it is "harder to be young". The review was ordered nine months ago by then health secretary Wes Streeting.
NHS survey data shows 25.8% of 16- to 24-year-olds in England now has a common mental health condition, up from 18.9% in 2014 — with 36.1% of young women affected compared with 16.3% of young men. Self-harm rates have quadrupled since 2000.
The Haven is a dedicated wellbeing space the college has opened for students to decompress and seek support. Maggie Evans, the college's wellbeing support facilitator, said: "If students feel safe, happy and included within our campus, they are more likely to achieve academically to their full potential."
NHS signposting for young people in crisis lists YoungMinds, Childline, Kooth and Samaritans among the routes to help.
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