While Finland continues to claim the No. 1 spot in the World Happiness Report, the U.S. remains outside of even the top 10 — coming in at No. 23, according to the 2026 edition.
And while the report looks at the well-being of people in age groups across the board, it appears America’s youth is doing even worse. Out of 136 countries, young people ages 15 to 24 in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand rank between 122 and 133 for happiness.
Here’s why young Americans’ wellbeing is “falling off a cliff,” according to Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, which publishes the World Happiness Report.
The average U.S. teen spends nearly five hours per day on social media
One big reason the report explored for the low rates of happiness among young Americans is the proliferation of smartphones and social media since the early 2010s.
“Adoption and usage was much faster in the Anglosphere,” says Tara Thiagarajan, founder and chief scientist of research nonprofit Sapien Labs, “because the first language of the internet was English.” The organization recently released its own findings on global health.
World Happiness Report researchers found that the amount of time a teen uses social media has a direct effect on their wellbeing.
The report uses research that asks participants to rate their lives on a scale of 0 (the worst possible) to 10 (the best possible). “Fifteen-year-old girls using social media for five hours or more a day are a whole point lower in terms of their life evaluation” than those using it for an hour or less, says De Neve.
And five hours is fairly normal for U.S. teens, according to a 2023 Gallup survey of more than 1,500 adolescents. Fifteen to 18-year-olds, for example, spend an average of between 4.9 and 5.8 hours per day on social media.
Studies have long shown an association between social media use and depression in adolescents.
‘We see that every younger generation reports less close family ties’
There are likely other reasons for young Americans’ lowered wellbeing as well.
Consumption of ultra-processed foods “has a major impact on your ability for emotional control and regulation and your depressive symptoms,” says Thiagarajan. About 62% of calories consumed by one to 18-year-olds come from ultra-processed foods, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lack of social ties could be another reason. “We see that every younger generation reports less close family ties, less friends that will help them out,” says Thiagarajan. “So they’re not embedded in a strong social support network anymore.”
Fifteen-year-old girls using social media for five hours or more a day are a whole point lower in terms of their life evaluation.
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve
Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford
Other elements of life are harder to measure in terms of their impact on youth wellbeing, says De Neve, but it’s clear they have an impact. These include anxiety around future of work, climate change, affordability of housing, rising cost of education and political polarization.
“All of them matter,” says De Neve, “and all of them feed into sort of a toxic cocktail” that affects under 25-year-olds’ happiness.
As far as advice for young people goes, “if you have a choice between going for a run and scrolling Tiktok, choose the run,” says Thiagarajan. If you have a choice between watching something on your phone and hanging out with friends, hang out with your friends, she says.
Especially as more apps and tech get introduced like the many chatbots available today, “let’s be sure that we stay in control and be proud of the fact that you manage these tools,” says De Neve, “rather than these tools ending up managing you.”
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