Canada slips to 25th in 2026 World Happiness Report as study flags risks from heavy social media use

Canada has fallen to 25th place in the 2026 World Happiness Report, down from 18th a year earlier, as the study spotlights a sharp drop in young people’s well-being in North America and Western Europe and examines how heavy social media use may be contributing.

The report, covering 147 countries, places Canada well behind high performers such as Finland and Denmark, while still far above the bottom of the table, which includes Malawi, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. It is published by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre in partnership with Gallup, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the report’s Editorial Board.

“In North America and Western Europe, young people are much less happy than 15 years ago,” the executive summary states. Over the same period, social media use has grown dramatically.

While the authors note that many people blame social media for the decline, they ask whether that hypothesis stands up to rigorous analysis—particularly given that youth happiness has not fallen relative to adults in other regions where social media is equally prevalent.

The report surveys a range of research. It finds adolescents who use social media for more than seven hours a day report much worse well-being than those using it for less than one hour. In a sample of U.S. college students, it adds, a majority said they wish social media platforms did not exist; they use them because others do.

Data from Latin America suggest platform design matters: services that facilitate social connections show a clear positive association with happiness, while algorithmically curated content shows a negative association at high rates of use. Overall, the authors conclude that heavy users of social media are at risk, especially in English-speaking countries and Western Europe.

They do not attribute all responsibility to social media, but write that evidence in the report suggests heavy use, particularly in some countries, provides an important part of the explanation for declining youth well-being. The report is more direct regarding younger users.

Posing what it calls the “product safety question”—whether social media is reasonably safe for children and adolescents—it answers: no. That conclusion draws on surveys of young people, parents, teachers and clinicians; corporate documents; cross-sectional and longitudinal studies; and experiments that reduced social media use.

It notes that in December, the Australian government raised the minimum age for 10 social media platforms to 16 from 13. Canada’s ranking and the report’s cautions about heavy social media use underscore a widening generational gap in well-being in parts of the West.

The authors say the risks are most acute for heavy users and emphasize that platform type and intensity of use are key factors.