Heavy social media usage erodes young people’s wellbeing, report finds

By Anne Kauranen

HELSINKI, March 19 (Reuters) – Heavy social media usage appears to contribute to a drop in wellbeing among young people, especially girls, in some English-speaking countries, the World Happiness Report published on Thursday found.

Already, a number of countries across the world are working on plans to curb children’s social media access after Australia in December became the world’s first country to ban social media for children under 16.

The latest research published in the annual World Happiness Report is based on data from U.S. market research company Gallup and other studies, analysed by a global team led by the University of Oxford in England.

REAL SOCIAL CONNECTIONS MATTER

The report did not establish a direct link. 

However, researchers for this year’s version of the report, combined the Gallup data with that from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment and other studies, leading them to conclude heavy social media use appeared to reduce happiness.

“The message coming through loud and clear is that we should try to put the social back into social media,” Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford Jan-Emmanuel de Neve, one of the editors of the World Happiness Report, told Reuters.

De Neve added that algorithmically-pushed, passively-consumed and mostly influencer-type content had a more negative impact on users than a platform that connects people socially.

With the caveat that the impact of social media on wellbeing was complex, he said the combined data showed that 15-year-old girls, who used social media platforms for more than five hours a day, reported lower life satisfaction compared to girls of their age who use social media less.

Gallup’s world-wide poll data showed life evaluations, or how people assess their life satisfaction, among under 25-year-olds in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have dropped “dramatically”, by almost one point on a 0-10 scale, over the last decade.

By contrast, it found the self-reported life satisfaction of the young in the rest of the world increased on average over the same period.

Gallup’s managing editor Julie Ray said the difference in life satisfaction between the young in the English-speaking countries and the rest of the world was likely related to broader social conditions.

“Social support is one of the strongest predictors of wellbeing, and previous research shows that in some countries younger people report feeling less supported, which may help explain the pattern,” she told Reuters by email.

(Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki and Ilze Filks in Stockholm; editing by Barbara Lewis)