International Day of Happiness

So where do digital media products fall on this spectrum? Are they more like bicycles or guns? Key Insights  Is social media use reasonably safe for children and adolescents ? We call this the “product safety question”, and we present seven lines of evidence showing that the answer is no. The evidence of harm is found in: 1) surveys of young people; 2) surveys of parents, teachers, and clinicians; 3) contents from corporate documents; 4) findings from cross-sectional studies; 5) findings from longitudinal studies; 6) findings from social media reduction experiments ; and 7) findings from natural experiments. We show there is now overwhelming evidence of severe and widespread direct harms (such as sextortion and cyberbullying), and compelling evidence of troubling indirect harms (such as depression and anxiety). Furthermore, we show that the harms and risks to individual users are so diverse and vast in scope that they justify the view that social media is causing harm at a popul...

Selecting high-quality evidence is only part of the challenge. “Good evidence” must be paired with the “good governance of evidence”. Key Insights  Professional science organisations that have examined social media and adolescent mental health have reached different conclusions and policy recommendations despite examining similar research. Given their substantial influence on policy and public understanding , it is important to investigate their evidence synthesis practices. Our analysis of three high-profile reports on social media and adolescent mental health finds that they cited broadly similar types of research, yet showed little overlap (<1%) in their sources. We also found considerable variation in how the reports synthesize, communicate, and simplify evidence, including differences in citation accuracy, contextual detail, limitation acknowledgement, and conclusion strength. The stakes of getting these syntheses right are substantial. Poor synthesis quality risks deve...

  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...

The key point is that many social media users wish the Social Media platforms they use did not exist and would even be willing to pay to put it out of existence. Key Insights  Three empirical studies raise serious doubts about whether social media use makes people happy , with implications for valuation, choice, and well-being. The central conclusion is that many people use social media because other people use social media. If social media use were somehow reduced or even stopped, many people would be better off , and they are aware of that fact.  The first study finds that people are willing to pay far less to use  Social Media platforms  than they would demand to stop using them. The fact that people would pay little or nothing to use such platforms raises the possibility that many think they are wasting time when doing so .  The second study finds that people lose welfare from using Facebook. Even after experiencing a happier month without Facebook, howeve...

   Most studies on the relationship between social media use and well-being have been carried out in Western, high-income settings, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe. Although valuable, these insights cannot be generalized. Key Insights  Social media use in the Middle East and North Africa is among the highest in the world, although considerable differences appear among countries. Heavy use is more common than in other regions: between 20% and 40% of users reported more than five hours of use in 2023–2024. Social media use is heavier among certain social groups. Gen Z, men, single individuals, less religious and more affluent respondents, as well as those with higher education, are much more likely to be heavy users. On average, heavy social media use (more than five hours per day) is associated with lower wellbeing . Heavy users are significantly more likely to report higher stress and depressive symptoms, and believe they are w...