'I fantasise about being free, but I'll probably die this way.' The worrying trend of British teenagers withdrawing from the world, isolating in their bedrooms and only leaving the house once a MONTH

By EVE LIVINGSTON and JANE FRYER Published: 01:00, 1 August 2026 | Updated: 01:00, 1 August 2026 Daniel is 22, lives with his mother Claire and two younger siblings and, for nearly five years, has rarely left his bedroom, let alone the family home in Somerset. He hasn’t worked. He hasn’t studied. He has not been in any sort of training. He’s just spent the time in his room – gaming, sleeping long hours, reading online forums, listening to podcasts, watching TV and films, and eating alone. He might occasionally pop to the kitchen to grab more food, perhaps passing a family member on the landing. Or to the bathroom for a shower. But mostly his increasingly desperate mother brings him food and clean laundry. He has tried to look after himself – trimming his hair, exercising sporadically with a set of dumbbells he’s ordered online. And, by his own estimate – ‘maybe once a month’ –he does actually leave the house to pick up essentials at a local shop – always using the self-checkout – or to put the bins out. Usually when his mother is away. Let’s be clear, Daniel is not a prisoner. This is how he has chosen to live, ever since he left school: systematically cutting himself off from his friends, his old life, his extended family, and most of the outside world. But while, to most of us, his life sounds dystopian, or worryingly like that of a 21st century Miss Haversham – and every parent’s worst nightmare – he is not alone. In fact, he is one of a rapidly growing number of (mostly) young people who have embraced a phenomenon first identified in Japan in the 1990s called hikikomori – a form of extreme social isolation, most common among young adults. As identified in a 2025 survey, the characteristics of hikikomori (which comes from the Japanese verbs ‘hiku’, to withdraw, and ‘komoru’, to seclude oneself), which distinguish it from bog-standard depression, include staying at home most of the day, avoiding social interactions including school or work; and prolonged isolation for at least six months. Some young people have embraced a phenomenon first identified in Japan in the 1990s called hikikomori – a form of extreme social isolation, most common among young adults Typically, it affects people aged 20 to 27, but can begin as young as 13. It also appears to be more common in boys and men than women and girls. In Japan, there are more than 1.5million people living as hikikomori; more than 1 per cent of the population. It is now on the rise in the UK. Just this week, a study led by researchers at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) found that 20 per cent of the UK university students surveyed showed early and very worrying signs of hikikomori-like social withdrawal. One in eight of those was deeply distressed by their condition. Hikikomori used to be a specifically Japanese cultural issue, sometimes triggered by parental pressure, lack of communication and a cultural aversion to therapy. But, according to Dr Yoko Nagai, senior author of the study and researcher at BSMS, ‘it is a global phenomenon now and particularly in the UK, where the problem is becoming really serious, because it overlaps with other problems’. For example, a least a third of young British men have failed to move out of the family home. And more than a million 16 to 24-year-olds are ‘Neets’ – not in employment, education or training; they’re now on Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s priority list. This huge figure is thanks to a combination of Covid, AI, and the effect of Labour’s madly punitive employment tax rises on starter jobs. Many youngsters, already partially isolated from the mainstream, are now at risk of withdrawing altogether. They may be triggered into full blown hikikomori by factors including depression, anxiety, bullying, low self-esteem, shame, relationship issues or feeling misunderstood. ‘We have to implement intervention urgently and raise awareness in schools, at universities, with mental health professionals and parents,’ says Dr Nagai. For Daniel, it all seems to have started when school stopped. As a young boy, he’d been happy and confident – in the thick of things at school and at home. And as a teenager, he became less extroverted but happily went to school. In the latter years of his education, however, Covid threw up a stop-start rhythm of lockdowns, closures, virtual learning and online exams. With hindsight, Claire feels that this must have influenced what came next, but at the time she was just relieved when, despite all the disruption, Daniel achieved the results he needed to get into college or university. ‘But instead, it was as if he just went to his room the day school finished and then never came downstairs again,’ says Claire. She’s sure it can’t have been quite as abrupt as that – but she also remembers endless knocks on his bedroom door, trying to start a conversation about UCAS applications, or an advert for a part-time job in the local cafe, and being ‘totally stonewalled’. ‘I started just leaving things outside the door for him – college prospectuses, plates of dinner, articles from a magazine that I thought might cheer him up,’ she says. As a single parent with nobody else to turn to, she was floundering. She knocked to invite him every time she left the house for a walk or an errand. And, on the rare occasions she was able to ambush him on the way to the bathroom or kitchen, she tried to engage him in conversations about his mental health. Finally, in desperation, she started adding GP leaflets about anxiety and depression to the pile outside his door. But he always said he was fine. ‘His line was always that I didn’t need to worry about his mental health,’ Claire says. ‘He just preferred his own company and he was looking for jobs online. He told me he had lots of friends and just preferred to speak to them on the computer. In Japan, there are more than 1.5million people living as hikikomori – which amounts to more than 1 per cent of the population Dr Yoko Nagai said people need to ‘raise awareness in schools, at universities, with mental health professionals and parents’ about this form of isolation ‘He asked me to back off basically, and I didn’t really feel like I had any choice except to do just that.’ So she did. Which might seem like extraordinary parenting to those not in Claire’s shoes. But, according to all hikikomori experts, this was exactly the right thing to do, rather than yell and scream and turn off the wifi to force him back into the real world. ‘That would have been counter-productive – you must be very sensitive and supportive,’ says Dr Nagai firmly. ‘They already feel pressured and misunderstood, so you must not make it worse. No judging. No, “when I was your age I was doing this and that”.’ Yuko Nippoda, a psychiatrist and spokeswoman for the UK Council for Psychotherapy, who has been working with hikikomori for more than 30 years, agrees. She advises doing ‘nothing that adds pressure; nothing that might make them consider more drastic action’. Instead, parents must try to understand why their children are choosing to live like this and accept that, for most, the initial withdrawal from life can be a huge relief. ‘Their room becomes their cocoon, it makes them feel safer and happier,’ says Nippoda. Of course it does – they can control their environment, game whenever they like and avoid stressful social situations. But, after the initial relief, they become trapped; rock bottom in confidence, often nocturnal and unable to ask for help. Then the months (and often years) begin to pass by. One needs only a quick search on Reddit or Facebook to get an idea of how awful things can become – how many sufferers there are in the UK, and how impotent family and friends feel. ‘I am [a hikikomori] . . . it sucks and I hate my life,’ one Reddit user writes. ‘Every single attempt at recovery has ended up in an even deeper relapse and it’s so painfully boring and lonely. . . I fantasise about being free all the time but I know I’m probably just going to die this way.’ Those who have emerged back into mainstream life are reluctant to discuss it. ‘My son has now completely recovered and I think it would be the worst thing for him to bring it up and revisit that time again,’ a mother writes on Facebook. ‘I became a hiki after dropping out of high school at 16,’ writes one. ‘I’m 37 now with the mind of a 16-year-old. Two decades and I’ve done nothing, never had a kiss, never got a job, just spent every day online. It does not get better.’ Two decades! But this is nothing compared to some cases in Japan. ‘I know of many who have lived like this for 40 or 50 years in bedrooms in their parents’ homes,’ says Nippoda. ‘But now the parents have passed on and they don’t know how to live – how to cook, to go shopping, anything. For them, outside is a very scary world.’ She is also insistent that, with the right support and therapy, recovery is possible – at least for those who ask for help. Not all do ask, because some insist they are happy. Like Lewis, 19, who is from a small town in north-west England. He lives with his parents and tells us via ‘disappearing’ messages on WhatsApp (‘no one my age speaks on the phone’) that he has been a hikikomori for about a year. He says that, because he has always preferred his own company and spending long hours online in his room to socialising in person, for him it all came gradually. Eventually, at one point in 2025, he realised that he didn’t have to force himself to do things he didn’t want to do. ‘I can just speak to my parents when I go to get my tea and I don’t need to do any more than that,’ he says. Instead, he spends his time gaming on a high-powered computer or working on an ‘anime-style’ graphic novel on a tablet. He reads books that he orders online, eats meals that his mother cooks and is ‘largely nocturnal’ because he says it seems to suit him better. Occasionally, he takes on freelance data entry work that he does from his bedroom, but of course, he doesn’t need much money, because he doesn’t really go anywhere. Over the past year, he has reluctantly left the house on ‘a handful of occasions’, mostly for medical and dental appointments and, when a grandparent passed away, he stayed a night in another town. ‘It wasn’t ideal but it had to be done,’ he writes. While to many this may sound like a desperately sad half-life, Lewis insists that, perhaps partly because of his autism, he is happier away from all the unwritten rules of the outside world. A quick search on Reddit or Facebook about how awful hikikomori can become shows how many sufferers there are in the UK and how impotent family and friends feel ‘Modern society is so demanding of us,’ he writes. ‘It’s normal and even healthy to want to take a step back and engage on your own terms. I’m much happier this way than having to make small talk with strangers or be managed all day in a workplace.’ As hikikomori spreads around the world, societies react in different ways. In South Korea – where there are an estimated 500,000 hikikomori – the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has come up with novel solutions. One is to offer recluses from low-income families about £500 a month to coax them out of their homes, along with subsidies for a raft of services, including health, education, counselling, cultural activities and even ‘correction of appearance and scars’. And last year, increasingly desperate parents started signing up for a stint in a facility called The Happiness Factory, where they were locked in teeny cells with bare walls – to learn what it feels like to be cut off from the world. It may sound a bit extreme but Nippoda thinks it’s a brilliant idea for parents to better understand what their children are going through. Meanwhile, here in the UK, experts agree hikikomori needs urgent publicity – particularly given our million-odd Neets already existing largely on the edge of life. For Daniel and Claire, the tide turned about 18 months ago when one morning he came downstairs and sat at the kitchen table with his mum for the first time in years. ‘He said he’d been thinking about things and he’d like to be a bit more active in his life,’ says Claire. As they chatted for an hour – the longest in years – he admitted he wanted more for himself but was completely crippled by social anxiety. Over the next few months, slowly, steadily and painfully, he started spending more time downstairs with his family. He has agreed to see a GP and a therapist – though, naturally, there is a waiting list – but he still struggles to leave the house due to anxiety and is yet to reconnect with old friends. He is now applying for training courses and jobs. ‘Things are much brighter now,’ says Claire. ‘For me, life has always been about relationships and experiences and being out and about in the world. I couldn’t see that for him for a long time and it broke my heart, but I think I can now.’ Her son agrees. ‘It feels like the right track,’ he says quietly. Poor Daniel – five years! What a crying shame.