What makes a country happy?

Replay last year's World Happiness Report Launch Event to see how people around the world defined happiness in 2024.




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Launch of the World Happiness Report 2026.

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  Many people blame social media for this fall in happiness, but does this hypothesis stand the test of rigorous scientific analysis? Chapter 1: Executive summary: happiness and social media Chapter 2: International evidence on happiness and social media Chapter 3; Social media is harming adolescents at a scale large enough to cause changes at the population level Chapter 4; Translating scientific evidence into effective policies for health and technology requires care Chapter 5: Adolescent life satisfaction and social media use: gender differences in an international dataset Chapter 6 : Social media, wasting time, and product traps Chapter 7: Problematic social media use and adolescent wellbeing: the role of family socioeconomic status across 43 countries Chapter 8: Internet use, social media, and well-being: the role of trust, social connections, and emotional bonds .                                ...
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International evidence on happiness and social media.

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  The relationship between social media and happiness is contingent upon both platform design and the broader cultural and social context in which social media use takes place. Key Insights  Trends in global happiness  • Nordic countries lead the happiness rankings once again. Finland is still in a group of one at the top, followed by a group of three: Iceland, Denmark, and Costa Rica. Sweden and Norway complete the top six, followed by the Netherlands, Israel, Luxembourg, and Switzerland to round out the top ten. Costa Rica’s rise to 4th marks the highest ever ranking for a Latin American country. • Looking at changes in happiness from the 2006–2010 base period to 2023–2025, there are more countries with significant gains (79) than with significant losses (41), among the 136 countries ranked. • Within that period, most of the 21 countries that have gained a point or more on the 0–10 life evaluation scale are in Central and Eastern Europe, reflecting the convergence in E...
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Adolescent life satisfaction and social media use: gender differences in an international dataset.

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  Among girls worldwide, non-users and light users of social media were more satisfied with their lives than heavy users. Key Insights  Although many studies have documented links between heavy social media use and poor mental health , fewer studies have explored associations with positive well-being , especially in international datasets. In 2022, the OECD’s PISA survey, conducted in 47 countries, asked over 270,000 15- to 16-year-olds how many hours a day they spent using social media and how satisfied they were with their lives. Among girls, mean life satisfaction was highest among light users of social media (less than an hour a day) and declined with further hours of use. Among boys, this pattern held only in Western Europe and English-speaking countries. The mean differences obscure a notable pattern, especially among boys. Compared to light users, a larger percentage of the heaviest users (7+ hours a day) had both the highest level of life satisfaction (10) and the lo...
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