World Happiness Report 2026: The social media and happiness connect Premium

World Happiness Report 2026 reveals heavy social media use lowers youth wellbeing, especially among girls in English-speaking countries.

Is the digital landscape quietly making a generation less happy? The answer, according to the latest World Happiness Report 2026, appears to be yes. Heavy social media use seems to be contributing to a drop in wellbeing among young people in English-speaking countries and Western Europe, especially among girls, according to the report’s findings, published on March 19, ahead of the UN’s International Day of Happiness.

Brought out by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an independent editorial board, the World Happiness Report 2026 provides an insight into the global picture of social media and happiness.

The report said that life evaluations among those aged under 25 in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have dropped dramatically (by almost one point on a 0 to 10 scale) over the past decade, while the average for the young in the rest of the world has increased, according to Gallup World Poll data.

According to data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which covered seven internet activities for 15-year-old students in 47 countries (not including United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), life satisfaction is highest at low rates of social media use and lower at higher rates of use.

Looking at two groups of Internet activities, it said that communications, news, learning, and content creation are associated with higher life satisfaction, while social media, gaming, and browsing for fun are associated with lower life evaluations. All internet activities are associated with lower life satisfaction at very high rates of use, especially for girls and for those in the U.K. and Ireland, the two English-speaking countries in PISA.

Data from Latin America show that the type of platform is crucial. Those designed to facilitate social connections show a clear positive association with happiness, whereas those driven by algorithmically curated content tend to demonstrate a negative association at high rates of use, the report said.