The phrase “age of anxiety” is persuasive because nearly everyone can supply an example. A rent increase, an alarming headline or a phone that never quite goes quiet can make the future feel too close for comfort. Yet a feeling that life is anxious is not the same as proof that everyone is more anxious than previous generations. Before we diagnose an era, we need to ask what is being measured.
Anxiety itself is part of ordinary human life. It can focus attention before an exam or warn us about danger. A persistent, difficult-to-control worry that disrupts daily life is different. The NHS describes generalised anxiety disorder in terms of stress or worry affecting everyday life and being hard to control.¹ Treating every tense afternoon as a disorder trivialises illness; treating distress as just the price of modern life can leave people unsupported.
What the numbers actually count
The Office for National Statistics asks people how anxious they felt yesterday on a scale from zero to ten. Its broad national well-being series found that 23.6 per cent of UK adults reported high anxiety in October to December 2025. That was broadly stable against the same period a year earlier and improved compared with the pandemic period of late 2020.² The result is important, but it measures a recent feeling, not a clinical diagnosis.
A different ONS opinions survey found 33 per cent of adults in Great Britain reporting high anxiety in February to March 2026, unchanged from the equivalent period in 2025.³ The two figures should not be treated as contradictory or spliced into a single trend. They come from different survey designs and periods. Even “high anxiety” is a threshold on a particular question, not a census of anxiety disorders.
Globally, the World Health Organization estimated that around five per cent of people lived with an anxiety disorder in 2021.⁴ That is yet another measure, with its own modelling and diagnostic definitions. When a headline moves between feelings, symptoms, diagnoses and service use without saying so, a neat story about rising anxiety can be built from mismatched pieces.
Changes in willingness to speak about mental health also matter. Greater recognition may bring previously hidden distress into surveys and clinics. That is a welcome improvement in visibility, but it makes crude historical comparisons harder. Previous generations were not necessarily calmer because they had fewer appointments recorded.
A crowded list of pressures
It is reasonable to ask whether current conditions create more opportunities for worry. Insecure housing, debt, discrimination, illness and unstable work can all make uncertainty tangible. The WHO's work on social determinants stresses that mental health is shaped by social and economic conditions across the life course.⁵ A breathing exercise may ease a moment, but it cannot pay a bill or make a precarious contract secure.
Digital life can add friction. News arrives continuously; messages carry the expectation of a reply; social comparison can accompany an ordinary evening. But “the phone did it” is too simple an explanation. Technology can also provide companionship, information and access to support. Its effects depend on the person, the activity and what is happening offline. Turning a complex social problem into one villain can obscure the pressures that are harder to switch off.
Crises also affect groups unequally. The February 2026 ONS opinions survey reported higher high-anxiety rates among adults aged 16 to 29 than among older groups, and higher rates among women than men.³ Those differences do not make every young person anxious or establish one cause. They tell researchers where to ask more careful questions about exposure, resources and support.
The pandemic offers another caution. A rise during an emergency was real, but using its worst months as a permanent baseline can make later changes appear deceptively dramatic. The long view needs repeated measures gathered in comparable ways.
The question behind the question
“Are people more anxious?” can mean several things. Are there more people having anxious days, or are people feeling anxiety more intensely? Are more people receiving a diagnosis because access to assessment has changed? Is worry concentrated in groups facing particular risks? A survey about yesterday's feelings cannot answer all of these at once. The better question may be which people are carrying which pressures, for how long and with what room to recover.
Anxiety is also not always misplaced. Worry about losing a home can be an understandable response to a genuine threat. That does not make its physical effects harmless or mean support would be unwelcome. It means that good care should listen to the circumstances as well as the symptoms. A public argument that labels everyone “too sensitive” misses both the medical need and the real-world stressor.
What can change
If a person's worry is persistent or interferes with work, sleep or relationships, the NHS describes effective treatment options and routes to support.¹ Seeking help is not an admission that one's reaction to difficult circumstances is irrational. People can need care while also needing safer housing, less debt or a more manageable job.
At a community level, reducing anxiety means considering the conditions that sustain it: reliable services, social connection, fair work and accessible mental health care. The WHO makes the case that improving daily living conditions can prevent some distress as well as reduce inequalities.⁵ Individual habits have a place, but a society cannot meditate its way around every structural problem.
The most honest conclusion is also the least theatrical. Anxiety is common; some contemporary pressures are distinctive; and serious disorders deserve attention. The available figures do not settle whether this is uniquely the most anxious age in history. They do tell us enough to take present distress seriously without needing to exaggerate it.