World Happiness Report 2026 Flags Social Media's Toll on Youth

The World Happiness Report 2026, released Thursday by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, identifies heavy social media use as a significant factor in declining wellbeing among young people, particularly teenage girls in English-speaking countries and Western Europe. Finland topped the global rankings for the ninth consecutive year, while life satisfaction scores for those under 25 in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand fell sharply over the past decade.

The report, produced in partnership with the analytics firm Gallup and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, draws on responses from about 100,000 people across 140 countries and territories. Participants rated their current lives on a scale from 0 to 10, with roughly 1,000 individuals surveyed annually in most nations through telephone or face-to-face interviews. Nordic countries dominated the top spots, with Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway all placing in the top 10. Researchers attribute their sustained high rankings to factors including equitable wealth distribution, robust welfare systems that buffer economic downturns, and long healthy life expectancies.