Passively consuming algorithmic social media hurts teens’ mental health, according to the World Happiness Report for 2026, which joins a long line of critics arguing that such platforms are damaging for young people.
The widely cited, UN-backed index, which analyses global happiness levels, zeroed in this year on the impact of social media usage on mental health. Finland, which has led the rankings in previous years, was again named the world’s happiest nation.
The report, published March 19, said heavy social media use appears to be contributing to the drop in wellbeing among young people, and affects girls disproportionately. That’s thanks to digital crimes such as sextortion, where someone threatens to circulate intimate images of victims, and cyberbullying, as well as young people experiencing higher rates of depression and anxiety.
The "most problematic platforms” involve passively consuming visual influencer content surfaced by an algorithm, the authors said, citing data from Latin America.
Australia restricted young people’s access to social media services late last year and a growing number of countries are considering following suit, with regulators calling the services harmful and addictive. Greece, France, Spain and Portugal are among the European countries mulling such limits.
Not everyone agrees that such bans will alleviate a growing mental health crisis among young people, with opponents arguing that the link between long-term conditions and social media usage is unclear.
The report looked at a wide range of academic research, surveys and other evidence and found there were some positive links between social media usage and wellbeing in regions including the Middle East and Africa. But it found heavy use consistently associated with depression and stress.
A high-stakes trial in the US is set to determine whether social media sites such as Meta Platform Inc’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube are dangerously addictive to youths. It is the first among thousands of similar suits that expose the companies to billions of dollars in potential damages.
World happiness ranking
Overall, Finland remains the world’s happiest country for the ninth consecutive year, followed by Iceland, Denmark, Costa Rica and Sweden. No predominantly English-speaking countries reached the top 10 for a second year, with the US ranking 23rd and the UK 29th.
The rankings are based on a three-year average of each population’s assessment of their quality of life – muting the impact of swings from one year to the next. Factors such as GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, a sense of freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption help explain why people rate their life satisfaction the way they do.
The report is published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. – Bloomberg
