Leading experts to examine the impact of social media in World Happiness Report 2026
A global team of leading researchers will examine the association between social media and wellbeing for World Happiness Report 2026.
Powered by data from the Gallup World Poll, the World Happiness Report is the world’s foremost publication on global happiness. Released annually since 2012, the report provides valuable, interdisciplinary insights into the wellbeing of people across the globe.
Experts from the fields of economics, psychology, and beyond will collaborate on the 2026 edition, due to be released on 20 March 2026 to mark the UN’s International Day of Happiness.
As well as ranking the world’s happiest countries, each edition of the report includes detailed analysis from researchers working at the forefront of wellbeing science.
The editors of the World Happiness Report have closely followed the ongoing debate around social media usage – particularly among children and young people – and have assembled a range of expert researchers to help better understand the wellbeing consequences of social media use across age groups and cultures.
Following a global call for chapter proposals, World Happiness Report 2026 will bring all sides of the debate together to establish the facts, clarify disagreements, and provide a balanced assessment of what we know, what we don’t know, and what should be done.
John F. Helliwell, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of British Columbia and a founding editor of the World Happiness Report, said:
"In World Happiness Report 2024, we documented trends in happiness at different ages, finding globally diverging patterns, with drops in youth happiness especially marked in English-speaking countries.
“Now, powered by contributions from a range of national, regional and global experts, we will use available international data to see how closely the extent and nature of social media use match international differences in happiness trends in and among countries and global regions.”
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the University of Oxford and Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre which publishes the World Happiness Report, said:
"The unique power of interdisciplinary research enables us to dig deeper into complex and contentious topics such as the association between social media and wellbeing.
“By assembling such an impressive expert team of researchers from across the spectrum of the social media debate, we hope that World Happiness Report 2026 can offer much-needed evidence to inform the public debate and for the use of decision-makers the world over.”
The full list of contributing authors to World Happiness Report 2026 includes:
Assessing global linkages between happiness and social media use
- John F. Helliwell
Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia - Lara B. Aknin
Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University - Haifang Huang
Department of Economics, University of Alberta - Shun Wang
International Business School Suzhou, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Social media is harming adolescents at the individual level, and at a scale large enough to explain changes at the population level
- Jonathan Haidt
Stern School of Business, New York University - Zach Rausch
Stern School of Business, New York University
Title TBC
- Andrew Przybylski
Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford - Netta Weinstein
School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading
Adolescent life satisfaction and social media use: gender differences in an international dataset
- Jean Twenge
Department of Psychology, San Diego State University
Do social media platforms increase wellbeing? Three unresolved puzzles
- Cass Sunstein
Harvard Law School, Harvard University
Social media use and adolescent subjective wellbeing: the role of socioeconomic status across countries
- Pablo Gracia
Centre for Demographic Studies, Autonomous University of Barcelona - Roger Fernandez-Urbano
Centre for Demographic Studies, Autonomous University of Barcelona - Seyma Celik
Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin - Beyda Cineli
Centre for Demographic Studies, Autonomous University of Barcelona - Maria Rubio-Cabañez
Centre for Demographic Studies, Autonomous University of Barcelona
The effect of social media use on subjective wellbeing: the role of trust, social connections, and emotional bonds
- Zeynep Ozkok
Department of Economics, St. Francis Xavier University - Jonathan Rosborough
Department of Economics, St. Francis Xavier University - Brandon Malloy
Department of Economics, St. Francis Xavier University
Social media and wellbeing in the Middle East & North Africa
Working in partnership with the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS)
- Martijn Burger
EHERO, Erasmus University Rotterdam - Talita Greyling
School of Economics, University of Johannesburg - Stephanie Rossouw
School of Social Science and Humanities, Auckland University of Technology - Francesco Sarracino
STATEC Research - Fengyu Wu
STATEC Research
Chapter titles may be subject to change ahead of publication of World Happiness Report 2026.
About the World Happiness Report
The World Happiness Report is a partnership of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the WHR’s Editorial Board. The report is produced under the editorial control of the WHR Editorial Board.
Powered by data from the Gallup World Poll, the World Happiness Report is the world’s foremost publication on global happiness: an annual publication which provides valuable, interdisciplinary insights into the wellbeing and happiness of people across the globe.
In addition to the rankings of the world’s ‘happiest’ countries, the report includes curated submissions from experts at the forefront of wellbeing science.
For more information visit worldhappiness.report.