News Release
Thursday, March 19 2026
ANTIGONISH, NS – Researchers from St. Francis Xavier University’s Department of Economics are featured in the World Happiness Report 2026, which highlights the complex relationship between social media use and wellbeing, particularly among young people around the world.
The World Happiness Report, which is the world’s leading publication on global wellbeing, published its much-anticipated country happiness rankings today. For the ninth consecutive year, Finland topped the list with an average life evaluation score of almost 7.8 out of 10. For the first time since the rankings began in 2012, no English-speaking country appears in the top 10. Canada ranked 25th, with New Zealand 11th, Ireland 13th, Australia 15th, the United States 23rd, and the United Kingdom 29th.
This year’s report examines the relationship between social media use and wellbeing with experts from multiple disciplines using data from across the world. The report finds that heavy social media use is associated with lower wellbeing among youth in English-speaking countries and Western Europe, particularly among girls. Over the past decade, positive outlooks among people under 25 have declined sharply in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, while youth wellbeing has increased in many other regions. Factors like social connections and a sense of belonging are associated with much bigger changes in how respondents feel about their lives.
In their chapter, StFX Economics professors Drs. Zeynep Ozkok, Jonathan Rosborough, and Brandon Malloy examine the relationship between internet use and wellbeing across European countries. Their research analyzes data from the European Social Survey to explore how internet use interacts with interpersonal and institutional trust, social connections and emotional attachments to shape wellbeing across countries. “The estimated relationship between internet use and wellbeing varies sharply across generations, genders, and regions” said Dr. Zeynep Ozkok. “Differences in generational wellbeing are widening over time. Older adults benefit from stable trust, rising attachment, improved safety, and moderate digital use, while younger adults face the erosion of these foundations in highly saturated digital ecosystems” she added.
“Wellbeing losses and gains across Europe are shaped not by a single factor but by a combination of shifting social and emotional conditions,” noted Dr. Brandon Malloy. “Younger generations have faced large declines in interpersonal trust, perceived social activity, system trust, and feelings of safety, leading to sizable, predicted declines in wellbeing. Older generations, by contrast, show greater resilience. The generational contrast is therefore not only one of exposure but also one of sensitivity – the young experience large changes in key social variables, while the old are more affected by how strongly those variables matter for their wellbeing”.
“The digital age is reshaping the social and emotional foundations of wellbeing in Europe” said Dr. Jonathan Rosborough. “These effects are neither uniform nor inevitable: they depend on who people are, the social environments they inhabit, and the digital ecosystems around them. Understanding these interactions is essential for developing policies that support wellbeing in an increasingly online society”.
Key findings from the World Happiness Report include:
- Teenagers who use social media less than one hour per day report the highest wellbeing, even higher than those who do not use social media at all.
- Platforms designed to facilitate social connection tend to show positive links with happiness, while those driven by algorithmically curated content are more often associated with reduced wellbeing.
- Social factors such as strong relationships and a sense of belonging have an even greater influence on how people evaluate their lives.
- Social media creates a standard collective action problem – if social media channels exist, people lose out by not joining, but most people agree they would be better off if they did not exist.
Published ahead of the International Day of Happiness, the report is produced by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford in partnership with Gallup and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, using global survey data to assess how people evaluate their lives.
For more information: worldhappiness.report and for interviews with Zeynep Ozkok and Jonathan Rosborough, please contact Cindy MacKenzie at @email or 902-872-0161 or @email .
