BARCELONA As social media becomes a central part of young people’s lives, there are growing concerns about its impact on their mental health. Yet public debate and measures tend to treat adolescents as a homogeneous group.
We often overlook the fact that social media use does not affect all young people in the same way, nor does it have the same impact on their well-being.
In the latest chapter of the World Happiness Report 2026, published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network in partnership with the University of Oxford, we examine the relationship between problematic social media use and the well-being of adolescents from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
We examined 43 countries across six regions (Anglo-Celtic, Caucasus-Black Sea, Central and Eastern Europe, Mediterranean, Northern Europe and Western Europe), covering mainly European countries and their neighboring regions.
Using data from more than 330,000 young people, we found a clear and consistent pattern: higher levels of problematic social media use (i.e. compulsive or uncontrolled engagement with social media) are associated with poorer well-being.
Adolescents who reported more problematic use tended to experience more psychological complaints, such as low mood, nervousness, irritability, or difficulty sleeping. They also had lower life satisfaction, a measure of how positive they felt about their lives as a whole.
This pattern appears across all countries in our study, but its strength varies across countries. This is especially evident in Anglo-Celtic countries such as Britain and Ireland, while it is relatively weak in the Caucasus-Black Sea region.
Socioeconomic background matters
The story does not end with geography. Globally, adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to be more vulnerable to the negative consequences of problematic social media use than disadvantaged groups.
This means that socioeconomic status—the material and social resources available to families, such as income and living conditions—positively affects the risks and opportunities that young people experience as a result of online environments.
Interestingly, these inequalities are particularly evident when we look at life satisfaction. Differences between socioeconomic groups were smaller in terms of psychological complaints, but clearer and more consistent in how adolescents rated their lives overall.
One possible reason is that life satisfaction is more sensitive to social comparisons. Social media exposes young people to constant benchmarks—what others have, do, and achieve—which can amplify differences in their perceived opportunities and resources.
At the same time, these patterns are not the same everywhere. For example, socioeconomic differences in psychological complaints tend to be modest in most regions, including continental European countries such as France, Austria or Belgium, but are more pronounced in Anglo-Celtic countries such as Scotland and Wales.
In contrast, socioeconomic gaps in life satisfaction exist in most regions, although gaps tend to be smaller in Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Cyprus and Greece.
a growing problem
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We also looked at how these patterns evolved over time. The link between problematic social media use and poor adolescent well-being became stronger between 2018 and 2022.
This suggests that risks associated with problematic use may have intensified in recent years, possibly reflecting the growing role of digital technologies in young people’s daily lives, particularly during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Importantly, this intensification affected adolescents from different socioeconomic groups in broadly similar ways across most regions. In other words, while inequality still exists, it has not widened during this period.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution
While public debates about social media and mental health often treat adolescents as a single demographic group, our results reveal a more complex reality.
Problematic social media use is associated with poorer well-being across countries, but its impact is shaped by social realities. They vary based on where young people live and the resources available to them.
Not all teenagers experience the digital world in the same way, and not all teenagers are equally equipped to cope with the pressures of the digital world. Recognizing this is critical to designing policies that are not only effective but also equitable, ensuring that interventions reach youth most vulnerable to digital risks. SKS
SKS
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
