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Canada falls in the World Happiness rankings and social media is to blame
The 2026 World Happiness Report has been released, and Canada fell to 25th place in the global rankings from 18th last year. That puts it far below such perennially joyful places as Finland and Denmark, but still miles above Malawi, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, which rank dead last in the 147-nation survey.
But the report, published by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre in partnership with Gallup , the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network , and its own Editorial Board , has something to say about the mortal enemy of happiness.
It’s social media.
“In North America and Western Europe, young people are much less happy than 15 years ago,” the report notes in its executive summary. “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? What about the rest of the world, where young people’s happiness has not declined relative to adults, even though social media is equally prevalent?”
Wading through research on the topic, the report finds that adolescents who use social media for over seven hours a day have much worse well-being than those who use it for less than one hour. “In a sample of U.S. college students,” it adds, “the majority wish that social media platforms did not exist. They use them because others are using them, but they would prefer it if no one did.”
It also notes that data from Latin America reveals that the type of social media platform is crucial. “Platforms designed to facilitate social connections show a clear positive association with happiness, whereas those driven by algorithmically curated content tend to demonstrate a negative association at high rates of use.”
In concludes: “Heavy users of social media are at risk, especially in English-speaking countries and Western Europe.” It doesn’t lay all the blame there, but says “the evidence in this report does suggest that heavy social media use, especially in some countries, provides an important part of the explanation.”
It is less circumspect when it comes to the use of social media by the very young. “Is social media use reasonably safe for children and adolescents?” it asks. “We call this the ‘product safety question,’ and … the answer is no.”
Evidence comes from a variety of sources, including surveys of young people, parents, teachers, and clinicians; contents from corporate documents; findings from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies; and findings from social media reduction experiments.
It notes that, last December, the Australian government increased the age limit for 10 social media platforms to 16 from 13. “Other countries, including Denmark, France, and Spain, are planning similar regulation,” it says. “We hope that the evidence in this volume will help policy-makers in their assessment of such policies.”
The top 10 countries on the happiness index are Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Costa Rica, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Israel, Luxembourg and Switzerland. At number 25, Canada follows Saudi Arabia, the United States and Poland, but sits just ahead of Taiwan, Belize, Lithuania and the U.K.
The report defines happiness as a combination of factors including well-being, life evaluation and life satisfaction, but notes: “Our happiness ranking is based on a single life evaluation question called the Cantril Ladder.”
It asks: “Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”
The report notes that this question is both democratic and universal. “Rather than constructing an index from multiple metrics, the Cantril Ladder empowers people to make their own judgements about what matters most, regardless of their culture and background.”
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