Their generation is often derided for being work-shy, self-centred and overly sensitive. But when it comes to making money, people under 30 are proving they are something else entirely: successful.
A record 1,000 taxpayers under 30 earned more than £1m last year, an 11% increase on the year before, HMRC records show.
In total, these earners took home more than £3bn in the past year, making an average of £3m each.
Lubbock Fine, the accountancy firm which obtained the figures from HMRC, suggested that the surge could partly be driven by influencers’ income from marketing spend on social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
The record increase may also be down to bigger pay deals for sports, music and media stars, as well as higher salaries in technology and financial services, the accountancy firm suggested.
Under 30s now account for roughly 3% of all £1m+ earners and are thought to include Erling Haaland, the 25-year-old Manchester City striker who is estimated to earn £525,000 a week (about £27.3m a year) and 26-year-old Molly-Mae Hague, a former Love Island contestant and influencer who is reported to command up to £60,000 per post.
Overall, there are now 31,000 taxpayers who earn £1m a year or more, which is only a 1% rise on the year before.
This indicates the number of very high earners under 30 is increasing at a much faster pace than the number of high earners in older age groups.
But earning so much when you are young does not necessarily mean you will be wealthy for life, warned Russell Rich, head of sports and entertainment for Lubbock Fine. “Footballers, boxers, and sports people generally tend to live beyond their means when they retire,” he told the Times. “People in the arts also do not tend to be good at saving and investing the money they make.”
The number of people under 30 who earn over £1m has risen by 54% since the pandemic, when just 650 young taxpayers were recorded by HMRC in this income bracket.
Over roughly the same period, the amount spent on influencer marketing in the UK tripled to £917m, according to Lubbock Fine, and is predicted to exceed £1bn this year.
But it is not just young people who are cashing in – older generations are now waking up to their earning potential as influencers. Research from media analysts Ampere recently found it was people in the 55 to 64 age bracket who were delivering the highest growth in YouTube traffic, up 20% since 2020 in the US and 14% in the UK. TikTok, too, has had a 16% rise in British users in this age bracket in the past year.
“We’ve been seeing this trend over the last few years where older audiences who have traditionally [focused on] linear and broadcast TV have been digitising,” Minal Modha, the head of Ampere’s consumer research division, told the Guardian in December.
High profile older influencers include Caroline Idiens, a 53-year-old personal trainer from Berkshire who has 2.4m followers on Instagram, and Valerie Mackay, 62, who posts about her life as an older woman as @embracingfifty.
However, their reach still pales in comparison to the likes of Abby Roberts, a 24-year-old makeup influencer and music artist who has 15 million followers on TikTok and reportedly earns £14,000 per post.
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Remember “Netflix and chill?” About 10 years ago, the slang emerged like a Gen Z mating call: “Wanna come over and … hang out?”
Maybe it wasn’t the most elegant dating scene, but at least it was a dating scene. According to new study from the Wheatley Institute and the Institute for Family Studies, today’s young adults are in a “dating recession” — 2026 is all Netflix and no chill.
Our 2026 “State of our Unions” report, which surveyed 5,275 single adults between the ages of 22-35, found that only one in three of eligible young adults are actively dating. Nearly three quarters of women (74%) and two-thirds of men (64%) had not a single date, or dated only a few times, in the last year.
So, what’s throwing cold water on what’s supposed to be the most sexually charged phase of adult life?
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The relationship recession is keeping many single people from even trying to date. (iStock)
One of the most significant barriers to dating is an epidemic loss of self-confidence among young adults. Only about one in three said they felt comfortable approaching someone they were interested in, and less than 40% said they felt confident in their ability to talk about their feelings with a dating partner.
That’s not altogether alarming — vulnerability with a new person is always uncomfortable. Dating has always been a high-risk, high-reward game. What’s more alarming than that fear of intimacy is our finding that only 36% of young adults say they’re confident they can read social cues on dates. They don’t know how to be with someone else.
This hints at a bigger cause: kids aren’t just avoiding dates, they aren’t socializing at all. Last year, the Institute for Family Studies found that the average time young adults spent in person with friends in a given week has fallen by 50% since 2010. Other research has found that American adults are spending more time alone today — even post-pandemic — than ever before.
American teens spend an average of nearly four hours a day on social media and even longer on their smartphones generally. Is it any wonder that kids buried in a virtual world don’t know how to make eye contact or read body language? You can’t learn to read social cues unless you try reading social cues. Maybe Netflix actually killed the chill.
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Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes so much smartphone use also arrests development of resilience. Young people who don’t take risks don’t learn how to weather failure. Our research found another significant reason (48%) that young people aren’t asking each other out is their fear of repeating a painful past dating experience.
Still, the ‘dating recession’ is not for lack of desire. Despite their loner tendencies, 86% of our survey respondents said they hope to get married one day.
That, at least, is encouraging: our research also suggests married adults, particularly married parents, consistently report the highest levels of personal well-being and happiness. Recent research found married mothers and fathers 18 to 55 are almost twice as likely to be “very happy” with their lives, compared to their single and childless peers.
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Unfortunately, if today’s trends continue, at least one in three adults who are in their twenties today will never marry. That means fewer people will have children, too. A dating recession will make those numbers even bleaker.
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One of the most significant barriers to dating is an epidemic loss of self-confidence among young adults.
That means more young adults risk the fate of Elizabeth, a charming and ambitious young lawyer living in Texas. Elizabeth says she’s always desired marriage, but didn’t prioritize dating in her college years. “I thought, let’s wait until I’m established, and have gotten through my education and I’m settled somewhere long-term for my career before I really look for someone,” she said.
Fast-forward to Elizabeth’s graduation from law school, when she finally came up for air and found that marriage seemed farther away than ever. “Having not been in any serious relationship before, I didn’t really know how to do it,” she said.
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By pop-culture standards, Elizabeth did everything right: she worked hard, built an impressive career, and didn’t get ‘tied down’ too early. But visiting her sister recently, who took the opposite path — got married young, and had just had her third baby — Elizabeth said she was gutted to realize she’d have given “every dollar in [her] bank account” to have her sisters’ life.
This Valentine’s Day, young adults who desire a relationship should embrace the risk. They might not feel particularly confident, but there’s good news: according to our research, neither does anyone else. That’s ok. Love is messy. But it’s what makes life worthwhile.
Brad Wilcox, author of “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization,” is distinguished university professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.
What do the first ever baby monitor, Nigeria’s 2018 World Cup kit, an 80s boombox, the smashed parts of Edward Snowden’s computer, a “Please offer me a seat” badge and a Labubu have in common? They are all included in the V&A’s Design 1990-Now galleries, which reopen to the public this week.
The galleries, which run across two rooms on the upper floors of the museum, also house a collection of antique books. The displays cover six different themes including housing and living, crisis and conflict, and consumption and identity, rather than in a strict chronological order.
With 250 exhibits, including 60 new additions, this can mean different takes on one theme across decades, as with the women at work section. It features a power suit from 1986 – but also a plastic-lined bra worn by women working on production lines in China to avoid being searched, and a pair of fast-fashion jeans like those made in the factories at the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh that collapsed due to a structural failure.
The exhibits also demonstrate how history repeats itself, by using designs decades apart. This is clear with a poster calling for “No More Racist Murders” after the death of the teenager Rohit Duggal in 1992, which is displayed next to one commemorating Eric Garner, the Black man killed by a white police officer in 2014.
There are 11 objects sourced from Rapid Response, a scheme that allows members of the public to suggest contemporary objects to be included in the museum’s collection. On display here are Snake Island stamps, which became a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia, a “life medal” given to those imprisoned for environmental action, and that Labubu.
Corinna Gardner, the V&A’s senior curator of design and digital, worked on the update. “The ambition of these galleries has always been to think that everybody who enters these spaces wakes up in the 21st century,” she said at a preview. “So how can we inform an understanding of today through the past? But also maybe think about a collective sense of what a future that we all might want can be, and the role design plays within that? It’s material things through which we navigate our place in the world.”
Fresh insight into the objects we live with is everywhere – an Ikea lamp, for example, that is part of a manufacturing-at-scale section. “It’s designed as much to be compact for transport as it is to be beautiful in the home,” says Gardner.
An Apple home computer from 1977, and an accompanying advert suggesting the bliss of working from home, demonstrates the beginnings of something that is now a mainstay. “A computer in the home was a novelty at the time,” says Gardner. “There’s the idea that this husband [pictured in the advert], one might assume, is working away while his wife is kindly making dinner in the rear.”
The backstory of familiar or newsworthy designs can be fascinating. The first ever baby monitor, designed by Isamu Noguchi in 1937, was inspired by the Lindbergh baby kidnapping five years earlier. The popularisation of plywood as a commercial material dates back to Charles and Ray Eames making a plywood splint to hold soldiers’ legs while in transit during the second world war.
The burkini was made in 2004 after the designer Aheda Zanetti observed her niece struggling to play netball while wearing a hijab and a long-sleeved top. An unassuming-looking section of carbon-fibre rope, meanwhile, is the innovation that allows a building like Saudi Arabia’s 1km-high Jeddah Tower to power the lifts that serve all floors.
The final section focuses on data and communication, and design over the last 25 years. This is where Edward Snowden’s laptop – borrowed from the Guardian’s archive – is displayed. “The archivist called it ‘an object we need to hold on to, because it’s so fundamental to our history’,” says Gardner. “The sense of the contestation of the public realm, the digital public realm, is manifest in that object.”
The Labubu is also here – surrounded by the antique books, and the librarians who look after them. It’s an example of how design can sometimes disrupt the usual environment of our every day. “One of my favourite moments as we’ve been reinstalling these galleries has been the giggles from the librarians because they were looking down at the Labubu,” says Gardner.
Such reactions are what the V&A wants from the reworking of the gallery – whether from staff members, regular visitors or school groups of children and teenagers who might be surprised to see Labubus, football shirts or iPhones in a gallery. “Design museums, typically and historically, have been about celebrating excellence, and they do that very well,” she says. “These galleries are very much intended to be discursive …. The ambition is to be really expansive and open about that question of what design is.”
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A California economics professor is sounding the alarm on the “deficits in learning” she is seeing in the classroom, arguing that the decision to scrap standardized testing in the name of “inclusivity” is actually a disservice to the students it claims to help.
Cal State Long Beach professor Andrea Mays told Fox News Digital that the current cohort of college students, many of whom spent their formative middle school years in online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, are arriving on campus unprepared for basic coursework.
Mays spoke to Fox News Digital about the state’s university system’s decision to scrap the SAT as a requirement for college admission as playing a large role in that and that it has led to students coming to college unprepared and dropping out at higher rates.
Mays says the drop rate is up “phenomenally” and that chairs of other departments tell her it’s widespread, with 25% of students dropping classes, with math being a key area where students are coming in underprepared.
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A teacher at Cal State Long Beach is warning of the ramifications of the state system removing the SAT requirement. (Canart7/iStock)
“I teach a class that is offered for non-economics majors,” Mays explained. “I could put on an index card exactly what math is required for my class, it’s not calculus, and they are struggling with it, they’re embarrassed, they’re demoralized, they come into my classroom, and they say, or into my office hours, and they say, I never learned this stuff, I don’t know how to calculate a percentage change.”
“I can show them, but those are the students who are actually coming to me and asking me for help. There are lots of other students who are just too embarrassed even to do that, and who just end up dropping the class.”
Mays, who recently penned an opinion piece in the Orange Country Register with the headline “Bring back the SAT at CSU — or admit we are failing our own students,” says that the explanation she has gotten for the CSU system dropping the SAT is that “we want to be inclusive.”
“I am definitely for inclusivity on our campus,” Mays said. “We have a very diverse campus here. But I think it’s fraud to tell people that what we’re doing is so that we can be inclusive when really what we’re doing is we’re allowing people to enter that we know are really going to have a difficult time of it. They have no idea.”
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Graduates take part in the commencement ceremony for the College of Natural Sciences & Mathematics, California State University of Long Beach at Angel Stadium in Anaheim on Monday, May 15, 2023. (Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images)
In recent years, several activist groups have railed against the SAT and standardized testing in general, including the nation’s largest teachers union, and Fox News Digital asked Mays if that narrative is behind the CSU decision not to require the SAT.
“That might be a little bit of the implication there without saying so, I’m not an expert in the recent changes in the SAT, others have done that work looking at whether you can change questions so that groups that don’t do well on certain questions, can do better on other types of questions,” Mays said.
“There’s definitely room for discussion about what kind of a standard, is it the ACT? Is it the SAT or something? The problem is that high schools are heterogeneous,” Mays said.
“Not all high schools are excellent even if they say they are. And so you’ll get students who get As in algebra two, and then they come into my class and they can’t calculate a percentage change. They can’t find the intersection between two straight lines, both of which are seventh and eighth grade math requirements. So that students are getting passed on from high school into a four-year university is a disservice to them. They get here thinking they’re wonderful and finding out that they are at the bottom of the ability distribution for math and English.”
Acting Chancellor Steve Relyea stated in 2022 that when the decision to remove the SAT and ACT was made, the goal was to “level the playing field” and provide “greater access.” The decision followed a year-long study by the Admission Advisory Council, which found that the tests provided “negligible additional value” in predicting student success compared to high school GPA.
The system officially moved to “multi-factored admission criteria,” focusing on GPA in specific high school courses, extracurriculars, and socio-economic factors.
“Access without readiness is not opportunity,” Mays wrote in her article. “It is a disservice. If CSU is serious about student success, affordability, and equity, it must be willing to measure preparedness — and act on what it finds.”
Mays added, “Pretending preparation gaps do not exist is not equity.”
Mays told Fox News Digital that California’s robust and effective community college system is a tool ready to be utilized as an “alternative” for students who are coming out of high school, many who lost years of learning during COVID, and not prepared for college.
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“Go into the community system and take the lowest level English class you can so that you can write a sentence, you can write a paragraph, you could make an argument,” Mays said. “Take a basic math class that will transfer onto a four-year university and learn how to do the basic math that perhaps you didn’t learn when you were in middle school online.”
The California State University System did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
“There’s no reason not to use an SAT as a filter to let students know whether they’re prepared for college-level work or not,” Mays told Fox News Digital.
The US military conducted 10 strikes on more than 30 Islamic State targets in Syria between 3 and 12 February as part of a campaign against the extremist group in Iraq and Syria.
US Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement on Saturday that the US had struck IS infrastructure and weapons storage targets.
The attacks formed part of Operation Hawkeye Strike, in which the US killed or captured what it said were IS fighters and hit more than 100 IS targets. The campaign began after a member of Syria’s general security forces affiliated with IS ambushed US and Syrian forces in the city of Palmyra, killing two US soldiers and an interpreter, and wounding three members of the Syrian government forces.
The US has led the international coalition to defeat IS in Syria and Iraq since 2014, partnering with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to defeat the radical group. In November, Syria officially joined the coalition and Washington has since turned towards Damascus as its principal anti-IS ally.
Analysts warn that the group has been trying to reconstitute itself since the fall of Assad in December 2024, exploiting the security vacuum and weapons that flooded the country when Assad’s soldiers abandoned their posts.
On Saturday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, praised Damascus for its participation in the anti-IS coalition, welcoming the Syrian government’s commitment to fully cooperate with the US and the global coalition.
The US has steadily been evacuating male detainees accused of being IS fighters out of north-east Syria over the past month, announcing on Friday it had successfully transported 5,700 detainees to Iraq, where they are expected to stand trial. The US military is reducing its troop presence in Syria, evacuating its base in al-Tanf this week, after nearly a decade there.
Damascus took control of key IS prisons and camps last month as part of its offensive against the SDF, in which the SDF lost 80% of its territory. Among the camps Damascus now controls is al-Hawl camp, which previously held about 25,000 family members of suspected IS fighters.
Humanitarians said on Friday that almost the entire foreigners’ annexe of the camp, which had held about 6,000 women and children from 42 different countries, had been emptied over the past month. It is unclear where the foreign residents went or who removed them from the camp.
How is the atmosphere in Team India’s dressing room before the match against Pakistan?
Last Updated:
New Delhi: The countdown for the match between India and Pakistan in the ICC T20 World Cup 2026 has started. This match between the two teams will be played at R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo. An atmosphere has already started building regarding this match. In such a situation, both the teams have started preparing their respective strategies before the match. According to a report, the atmosphere of the Indian team before the match on Sunday is also more calm rather than aggressive.
The team has left the final decision in this matter to higher officials. The team will follow his instructions. However, within the Indian team, there is also caution regarding public sentiments on social media, because after the Pahalgam attack, sentiments still remain quite sensitive and reactions can be sharp.
Bangladesh cricket officials will also watch the match
Bangladesh Cricket Board President Aminul Islam Bulbul had said that he will be present in Colombo to watch the India-Pakistan match, where he hopes to get a chance to reduce the tension that has built up in the last few weeks with the BCCI. From the Indian side, BCCI President Mithun Manhas, Secretary Devjit Saikia and Vice President Rajeev Shukla are likely to be present.
Talking to Bangladesh newspaper ‘Pratham Alo’, Islam said that the invitation for this high-profile match has come from ICC. He said, ‘ICC has taken this decision. ICC’s major stakeholders are these five Asian countries and for the India-Pakistan World Cup match to be held on 15th, they want representatives of these five countries to be present together on the field, watch the match and interact with each other.
Surya challenged Pakistan in the press conference
The captains of both the teams held a press conference for this match on Saturday. In the press conference, Captain Surya said that he is ready for every challenge of Pakistan. Apart from this, he has given an update on the playing of Abhishek Sharma. Abhishek Sharma also did a lot of net practice in Colombo, in which he looked in good form.
Working as Chief Sub Editor in Network 18 Group since October 2025. 9 years experience in journalism. Started career with sports beat in ABP News Digital. Reputable institutions like India TV and Navbharat Times Group…read more
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Young women are reportedly flocking to “Medieval Times” events to swoon over knightly performers rather than use dating apps.
As genres like Romantasy, or romantic fantasy, dominate publishing and Game of Thrones’ new “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” series dominates streaming, many young women are going to Medieval Times dinner theater events to swoon over male performers.
Medieval Times is an immersive dinner theater experience franchise going back to 1983, with locations across the country. At these events, guests watch knights compete in staged medieval tournaments while eating a themed meal. Such events are essentially a live-action medieval sports show with a scripted storyline, combined with a restaurant experience, where guests cheer for the knight that represents their section of the audience in jousting, swordfights, and falconry.
The New York Post suggested that the trend of women going there for a night out started after popular podcaster Brittany Broski gushed about “flirting with the knights at Medieval Times” on her show “The Broski Report.”
Knights joust at the “Medieval Times” in Lyndhurst County, New Jersey, put on five days a week in a building inspired by the castles of medieval Europe, bringing the history of the city kingdoms of 11th century Spain to the stage in North America on Jan. 4, 2015. (Cem Ozdel/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
New York Post journalist Marissa Matozzo summarized the event’s appeal, writing “Between sword fights and royal decrees at the family-friendly dinner-and-tournament show (made famous after it was parodied in the 1996 Jim Carrey comedy “The Cable Guy”), flirty knights lock eyes with swooning women, toss roses into the crowd and crown lucky spectators the ‘Queen of the Tournament’ — giving modern dating a medieval makeover.”
Madison Rae, 28, of Fort Myers, Florida, offered her take, “I was born and raised on Disney movies — young girls were promised knights in shining armor,” she said. “Now we’ve grown up and have men on dating apps who can’t even plan a date after texting for two weeks. That’s hell on Earth.”
Rae, the Post reported, stitched her phone number into a handkerchief in the hopes of giving it to a knight.
“I think it’s like Hooters — but for women,” she joked.
“Watching men joust, fight and ride horses makes them hotter,” she told the Post. “Dating apps made seeing an attractive face normal. If guys really want to stand out? I think men should wear more armor.”
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Part of the appeal of such events is when knights address their fans in sections of the crowd they represent. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Nikki Sabate, 31, of Costa Mesa, California, offered similar praise for such events and their medieval appeal.
“My favorite moment was when I made eye contact with our knight and he threw me a rose,” she told The Post. “You can’t beat the feeling of getting noticed by a handsome knight in a roaring crowd.”
“Knights are portrayed as loyal, honorable and brave,” Sabate added. “Dating today feels like you have to do all the legwork. A storybook knight would put more effort into it — and that’s why people enjoy the attention.”
Dr. Shahrzad Jalali, a licensed clinical psychologist, offered a theory as to why this has such a strong appeal in the current cultural moment.
“There is no profile to curate, no algorithm deciding worth — just a shared moment where attention feels focused and human again,” the psychologist said. “Many women today are independent and capable, yet still long to feel cherished and pursued. Old-school chivalry speaks to that emotional longing without threatening autonomy.”
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Two performers portraying knights in melee combat. (Roberto Machado Noa/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Another licensed psychologist, Dr. Courtney Cantrell, offered a similar theory.
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“Little girls have been taught the age-old storyline of a knight in shining armor or a prince who will come and rescue you,” she told the Post. “Dating apps create too many choices, attention but lack of commitment — causing burnout. An environment like Medieval Times creates a sense of safety because everyone is playing a role.”
Man ordered Garlic Naan in Dubai, Langot Roti was delivered, laughed as soon as he saw it
Garlic Naan delivered by a restaurant in Dubai is in discussion on social media. This naan is in the news not because of its taste, but because of its shape. It is being told that an Indian had ordered Indian food for his friends there. But when the food was delivered, everything was fine. However, as soon as he opened the naan packet, everyone started laughing. Naan was made in the shape of Kachha. It looked like a loincloth. Seeing this, people also could not stop laughing.
