Heavy social media usage erodes young people’s well-being, report finds

HELSINKI – Heavy social media usage appears to contribute to a drop in well-being among young people, especially girls, in some English-speaking countries, the World Happiness Report published on March 19 found.

Already, a number of countries across the world are working on plans to curb children’s social media access after Australia in December became the world’s first country to ban social media for children under 16.

The latest research published in the annual World Happiness Report is based on data from US market research company Gallup and other studies, analysed by a global team led by the University of Oxford in England.

Real social connections matter

The report did not establish a direct link.

However, researchers for the 2026 version of the report combined the Gallup data with that from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment and other studies, leading them to conclude that heavy social media use appeared to reduce happiness.

“The message coming through loud and clear is that we should try to put the social back into social media,” economics professor Jan-Emmanuel de Neve from the University of Oxford, one of the editors of the World Happiness Report, told Reuters.

Prof de Neve added that algorithmically pushed, passively consumed and mostly influencer-type content had a more negative impact on users than a platform that connects people socially.

With the caveat that the impact of social media on well-being was complex, he said the combined data showed that 15-year-old girls who used social media platforms for more than five hours a day reported lower life satisfaction than girls of their age who used social media less.

Gallup’s worldwide poll data showed that life evaluations, or how people assess their life satisfaction, among under-25-year-olds in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have dropped “dramatically”, by almost one point on a 0-10 scale, over the last decade.

By contrast, it found the self-reported life satisfaction of young people in the rest of the world increased on average over the same period.

Gallup’s managing editor Julie Ray said the difference in life satisfaction between the young in the English-speaking countries and the rest of the world was likely related to broader social conditions.

“Social support is one of the strongest predictors of well-being, and previous research shows that in some countries younger people report feeling less supported, which may help explain the pattern,” she told Reuters by e-mail. REUTERS