Mar 27, 2026 World Happiness Report 2026: Deconstructing Social Media Impact on Well-being
The World Happiness Report 2026 was officially released on March 19, one day ahead of the UN International Day of Happiness. In this year’s report, the Nordic nations—Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland—once again dominated the top spots in the happiness rankings. Notably, Costa Rica entered the top tier, securing fourth place.
Each volume of the World Happiness Report typically emphasizes a specific theme. For example, the 2025 Report focused on declining happiness among young people. This year, the 2026 volume also focuses on this demographic. It features a chapter (Chapter Three) contributed by Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, and his colleague Zachary Rausch. This chapter summarizes their concerns about the negative impacts of social media on preteens and young teens.
WBI’s review of the book in July of 2025 commented that the book “is a timely, provocative and well-researched exploration of a very worrying generational crisis.” However, critics like Candace Odgers and Andrew Przybylski and Matti Vorre have challenged the assertion that social media is harmful to young people. In response, Haidt and Rausch have published their own rebuttal to Przyblski and Vorre. It is challenging for the average person to assess whose claims and arguments are accurate. However, as Haidt and Rausch suggest, if social media is indeed harmful, the risks of ignoring these claims of harm likely outweigh the benefits of allowing pre-teens and teenagers to continue using it.
Fortunately, the average person has another option: they can visit the Happier Lives Institute’s (HLI) website, which offers additional clarifying guidance on the topic. The HLI article begins with a chart showing significant declines in happiness among those under 25, comparing 2006-2011 to 2020-2025. This data is based on the life satisfaction measure known as the Cantrill Ladder, which Gallup uses and forms the basis of the World Happiness Report. Notably, declines in life satisfaction among individuals under 25 were not observed in Latin America.
The HLI analysis comments on the single study by Braghieri et al. (2022), which actually estimated the causal impact of exposure to social media on the mental health of US college students following the rollout of Facebook across US college campuses from 2004 onwards. The study reports negative effects amounting to 0.09 SDs (Standard Deviations). HLI notes that many scholars will consider an effect size of 0.09 SDs to be relatively trivial. However, HLI argues that even a small effect applied to the millions, or even billions, of young people who use social media could lead to substantial harm.
It is very challenging for parents to navigate the technical details of research in this field and conflicting claims to decide whether to allow their children to access social media. The Haidt and Rausch arguments in Chapter 3 of the World Happiness Report are presented as similar to evidentiary claims that might be made to a jury. [Meta and Google recently lost a case in which a jury found both companies liable for harming the mental health of young users.]
In another chapter of the World Happiness Report (chapter 6), Cass Sunstein suggests that social media might be a product trap, in which users buy goods for the abolition of which they would also be willing to pay. He cites an unreplicated study that found that participants would be willing to pay $28 to have all members of their community (the relevant academic institution), including themselves, deactivated from TikTok for a month, and $10 to do the same for Instagram. In other words, even though respondents use both social media apps to ensure they do not “miss out” on any social event or activity, they find both apps distracting and not worth their time.
The internet has become a revolutionary resource for people around the world, but not all online resources are beneficial. Haidt predicts that the debate over the advantages and disadvantages of social media will persist for decades, similar to the ongoing discussion about the effects of media violence on personal behavior. Based on insights from Haidt’s book and the latest materials from the World Happiness Report 2026, WBI recommends limiting social media access for pre-teens and young teens as a precautionary measure. We also urge funders to allocate more resources to clarify the impacts of social media.
For those interested in additional discussion of this issue, please see a 2024 article in The Guardian newspaper titled, “The Anxious Generation wants to save teens, but the best-seller’s anti-tech logic is skewed.” Additionally, a recent article on empathy among the current teen generation, titled The Kids are All Right, can be found in Scientific American.