Social media makes people unhappy - World Happiness Report
DW.com • • world
Key Points:
- Finland was ranked the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year, with Nordic countries dominating the top of the World Happiness Report 2026 due to factors like wealth, equality, strong welfare systems, and high life expectancy.
- The report highlighted a sharp decline in life satisfaction among people under 25 in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand over the past decade, linked in part to heavy social media use.
- Extensive social media use, particularly more than seven hours daily on image-focused, algorithm-driven platforms, is associated with lower well-being among young people, especially teenage girls in English-speaking and Western European countries.
- Most US college students expressed a desire for social media platforms to not exist, using them primarily because
