World Happiness Report 2026: How does social media affect the well-being of young people?

This year's edition World Happiness Report 2026, published by Gallup, focuses, among other things, on the impact of social media on young people, the quality of social connections, and the level of trust and sense of community. Experts in the field of mental health and the functioning of the media analyzed the areas that are recognized today as one of the key factors shaping the condition of modern societies.

In the latest studies of the level of happiness in the world, a complex, seemingly contradictory trend is visible. On the one hand, globally, more countries saw an increase in life satisfaction than a decrease, and the greatest improvements occurred mainly in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, indicating a gradual equalization of the level of well-being in Europe. On the other hand, many developed Western countries are less happy today than they were between 2005 and 2010. At the same time, the greatest declines in happiness levels are concentrated in countries affected by armed conflict and political instability. This means that although the average level of happiness in the world is increasing, these changes are uneven and depend on economic, social and security conditions.

Special attention is paid to young people, who, due to her age and her ever-developing social and emotional competencies, finds herself in an extremely demanding situation. On the one hand, it grows from an early age in the digital world, and on the other hand, there are still few regulations that effectively protect young users from the negative consequences of using social media.

What does social media do to us?

One of the more interesting conclusions of the report is that the use of social media for many people can be harmful and negatively affect their well-being. This would not be all that surprising if it were not for the fact that the researchers presented three empirical evidences that quite paradoxically show how much people would be willing to pay to eliminate social media from their lives if it affected all individuals in their community.

The first study found that people are willing to pay very little or not at all to be able to use social platforms, while they would expect a significant amount to stop using them. This suggests that many users perceive the use of social media as a waste of time, even though it is difficult for them to give it up completely.

A second study found that Facebook use was associated with a decline in well-being; users were more stressed and felt less satisfaction with life. Even after a month off from the platform, many of them would still require a significant amount of money to give it up entirely.

The third study, the most informative, found that young users of Instagram and TikTok required a good amount of money to stop using these platforms, but at the same time they would be willing to pay to remove them from the life of the entire community. This shows the phenomenon of the so-called negative external effects on non-users — social media also imposes costs on those who do not use it.

One conclusion from this research is that if social media did not exist, many people would be better off, even though social pressure and habit make them continue to use it. A single resignation is therefore much more difficult - it causes social exclusion and the impression of not being quite present in other people's space. And as we can guess - this is of particular importance for adolescents in adolescence.

Deteriorating youth well-being and the use of social media

In a survey of American teenagers, most respondents admitted that they would prefer to limit their use of social media or give it up altogether. The three platforms that the survey indicated as those that could not exist are: X (Twitter), TikTok and Snapchat. Interestingly, to a similar question - about what adults would remove from the virtual world if they had the opportunity - parents of American teenagers indicated in turn: adult content, availability of weapons and TikTok ex aequo with X (Twitter).

In Latin America, platforms based on algorithms to promote influencers proved to be the most problematic, while applications serving mainly interpersonal communication had a much smaller impact on the level of life satisfaction. In the Middle East and Africa, the negative impact of social media on well-being was weaker, but the damage was mainly associated with passive use - prolonged “scrolling” and the ability to constantly compare oneself with other users. Regardless of the region of the world, the most destructive effect on adolescents was the use of this type of entertainment for many hours - the difference between using social media for seven hours a day and one hour was associated with significantly lower levels of well-being of the subjects. The report also highlighted that in North America and Western Europe, happiness levels among young people have fallen markedly. The authors point out that this period coincided with the dynamic development of digital technologies, which significantly expanded the virtual world and contributed to the creation of numerous social platforms, most often based on recommendation algorithms.

Of course, the differences between geopolitically and socially disparate regions of the world mean that there can be many more reasons for higher or lower levels of happiness in individual countries. However, given the enormous role that the Internet and the virtual communities it creates in the modern world, it is difficult, especially in the light of data from 47 countries, not to see significant links between perceived well-being and the way we use social media.

Gender and length of use matters

If you look at gender differences, among girls, the highest average level of life satisfaction was recorded among those who used social media briefly, i.e. less than an hour a day, and a further increase in time spent online was associated with a decrease in well-being. In boys, a similar pattern was observed mainly in Western Europe and English-speaking countries. Perhaps this is related to the type of content promoted on the platforms; for female users, they are often based on references to physical attractiveness and sexuality, and the likelihood of sexual violence using the Internet is also higher. At the same time, for both boys and girls, the greatest variation in life satisfaction was found among those who used social media very intensively (7+ hours a day) and among “non-users” - in these groups the percentage of people reporting both the highest and lowest levels of life satisfaction was greater than among moderate users. In most regions, girls who did not use social media were the most likely to report full life satisfaction, although in some places heavy users were also more likely to be fully satisfied than those with moderate users.

The Modern Adolescent: The Impact of Social Media on Wellbeing and the Role of Socio-Economic Status

The report found that young people from lower social strata, less privileged (also in the media) and with a worse economic situation are more likely to suffer from psychological problems when they come into contact with social media. In a study involving 43 countries in the world, in terms of the level of the so-called Problematic Social Media Use (PSMU) and its impact on the well-being of adolescents, Poland took 17th place. The worst results have been Hungary, right behind them Latvia and Estonia, while the highest - sequentially: Kazakhstan, Georgia and Norway. In a separate analysis in which adolescents assessed their standard of living, Poland achieved 14th place.

The scale of the problem: does the virtual world threaten the population?

In one of the chapters of the report, researchers from Zanîngeha New York, Jonathan Haidt and Zachary Rausch, were asked: Is the use of social media by children and young people safe enough? They answered unequivocally: not. They supported their thesis with seven scientific evidences (based on surveys of adolescents, and parents, teachers and doctors, the content of corporate documents, the results of cross-sectional studies, the results of longitudinal studies - scientific studies in which the same participants are observed repeatedly for a long time), the results of experiments on the reduction of social media, the results of natural experiments).

The researchers, based on the collected evidence, unanimously conclude that the harm caused by the use of social media among young people occurs on two levels:

1. Direct: involving the risk of sexual blackmail (sextortion) and cyberbullying,
2. Intermediate: This includes an increase in depression and anxiety.

The scale of this damage is assessed by scientists at the level of the entire population.

The authors of the chapter also argue that the development and increasing availability of social media has contributed to the historic rise in mental illness among young people since the mid-2010s.

summary

Report World Happiness Report 2026 shows that heavy use of social media, especially by adolescents, can negatively affect psychological well-being, increasing stress, anxiety and feelings of dissatisfaction with life. The most vulnerable are people who spend many hours a day online, girls, young people with lower socioeconomic status and users of platforms that promote content of a comparative or sexual nature. Although social media maintains strong social pressure and remains an integral part of life, research indicates that limiting it could improve the well-being of many people.

Sources:

1. https://www.gallup.com/analytics/349487/world-happiness-report.aspx
2. https://www.worldhappiness.report/ed/2026/