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World Happiness Report 2026

In North America and Western Europe, young people are much less happy
than 15 years ago. Over the same period, social media use has greatly
increased. Many people blame social media for this fall in happiness,
but does this hypothesis stand the test of rigorous scientific
analysis?

Read the Report

  * 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 wellbeing: the role of
    trust, social connections, and emotional bonds
  * Chapter 9 Social media use and wellbeing in the Middle East and
    North Africa

  * Alternative formats
      + Download PDF (PDF)
      + Purchase e-book (ePub)
      + Purchase paperback (Paperback)
  * Appendices & Data
  * Country Rankings

2026

Appendices & Data

  * Statement of Competing Interests
  * Data for Figure 2.1
  * Chapter 2 Statistical Appendix
  * Chapter 3 Appendix
  * Chapter 4 Appendix
  * Chapter 7 Appendix
  * Chapter 8 Appendix
  * Chapter 9 Appendix
  * To access data from the Gallup World Poll, please see our
    data-sharing page.

Editors

John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Jan-Emmanuel De
Neve, Lara B. Aknin, and Shun Wang

Citation

Helliwell, J. F., Layard, R., Sachs, J. D., De Neve, J.-E., Aknin, L.
B., & Wang, S. (Eds.). (2026). World Happiness Report 2026.
University of Oxford: Wellbeing Research Centre.

ISBN

979-8-2513794-7-1

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The World Happiness Report is published by the Wellbeing Research
Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup, the
UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an independent
editorial board.

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the
views of our partners, the University of Oxford, or any organisation,
agency, or program of the United Nations.

For general inquiries, please contact [email protected].

For media inquiries, please contact [email protected].

  * Gallup
  * Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford
  * Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN)

  * Vancouver School of Economics at UBC
  * Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE, the Vancouver School
    of Economics at UBC
  * Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University
  * Simon Fraser University
  * International Business School Suzhou, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool
    University.
  * The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies

  * Ajinomoto Group
  * Bloom Wellbeing Fund
  * Blue Zones
  * Fondazione Ernesto Illy
  * Glico
  * illycaffe

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