Hello happiness seekers. Welcome back to the Happiness Challenge, the podcast where we explore science backed habits for a happier life. I'm Claudia Mitura. I'm a work psychologist and Chief Happiness officer and to celebrate International Day of Happiness throughout March, I've been diving into the research behind the World Happiness reports because each year they zoom in on one of big themes that can genuinely change the way we live. In 2024 the focus was on how happiness shifts across our lifetime and how can we maintain our happiness with aging. Have a listen to episode 222 if you have missed that one. Last year the spotlight turned to human connection and why sharing meals might be one of the simplest, yet the most powerful, powerful happiness habits that we can develop to really strengthen our relationships. And I covered all the insights in episode 223. And today in this episode I'm diving into the latest World Happiness Report that launched on March 20, 2026. And this year theme is Happiness and Social Media. I really think this one is a big one because it asks a question which I think many of us have been wondering about for ages now. Is the way we are using social media helping our well being or harming it? So let's dive in deeper into this topic. Just before we dive deeper into the latest World Happiness Report. Just very quick introduction and a reminder. That report is a leading publication on global well being, blending insights from over 140 different countries with expert analysis from top researchers across various fields. It's published annually by the well Being Research center at the University of Oxford in partnership with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. And I already mentioned that the mission is very simple but very powerful. It's very much to empower us worldwide with the knowledge that is needed to foster greater happiness for ourselves, but also for others and most importantly for society as a whole. So what does the 2026 report say? The executive summary opens with a very striking evidence that in North America and Western Europe, young people are much less happy than 15 years ago. And of course we know that over the same period social media use has greatly increased. We had a boom of variety of platforms. So the obvious question is are these two trends connected? Now the report doesn't pretend that there is one single cause of the drop, especially in youth well being. But it does suggest that heavy social media use is absolutely important explanation, especially in certain countries. Now the big pattern that is explored in the report is light use versus heavy use of social media. And one of the clearest findings comes from a study of 15 years old across 47 countries, which shows that teens who use social media more than seven hours a day. So that's your average heavy use have much lower well being than those who use it less than one hour a day. That's your light use. And girls are more impacted by the social media in a negative way than boys. Don't find that surprising. Social media is just full of information around body image, so not surprising by that finding at all. But I was definitely surprised that the heavy use is more than seven hours a day. That may sound excessive to many of us, but I think it's interesting to track that for ourselves. Do you actually know how much time you spend on social media platforms a day? For last couple of months, I've been trying to break a habit of reaching for social media accounts mindlessly with no intention. And I've been using an app called 1sec, which prevents this idea of just opening social media accounts unconsciously. It's very simple. The moment I reach for my phone and try to use social media, the app simply creates a pause, one second of a breath and asks me why do I want to open that social media media platform. And guess What? In last four weeks it saved me 17 hours from doom scrolling. 17 hours across four weeks, that is huge. I have reached for my phone mindlessly to just open unconsciously one of the social media accounts 347 times with no intention. I personally I was shocked because I don't perceive myself as a person who spends lots of time on social media, but actually it turns out that I do and I do it mindlessly and it feels like a quick minute of tracking something, but it adds up across four weeks. So I really do encourage you to think about your social media use. How often do you log in, check things mindlessly, maybe without intention? How much time do you spend a day? A week? I think it's really interesting to know. And now we have technology to do that. We have technology that can track that for us. Another part of the report, which I found really interesting and helpful is how the report separates different kind of online activity on social media platforms. So communication, learning, content creation are associated with higher life satisfaction. Okay, because they are about actively engaging with other people. Just scrolling on social media, gaming, just browsing is associated with lower life evaluation. And I found this really interesting. But I also found that reassuring in the sense that I have written about this idea of active versus passive use of social media in my book the Alphabet of Happiness. And I written about it in the context of social comparison that when we are scrolling through visual elements, without really thinking what we're seeing, without really reflecting actively of what are we seeing. We are falling into the trap of social comparison. And the report comes exactly to the same conclusion. Platform design matters. It's connection versus comparison. So the report highlights that not all platforms affects us in the same way. Platforms that are designed to facilitate social connection with other people, they have a positive association with happiness. But platforms that are driven by algorithm curated content, often fueled by influencers, when we compare ourselves with some ideal life out there, tend to show a negative association at the higher rates of use. And interestingly, I couldn't find much in the report about news and mainstream news and their impact on happiness. So that I think is quite interesting in itself. But overall from the report, what we can conclude is that heavy use and passive scrolling is absolutely associated with higher depression and stress. So it's not just generally the screen time is what the screen is feeding us and what it's pulling us away from in real life that really matters. Now, of course, the report dives into the fact that we are all aware of the negative impact of social media on our life, right? The report draws from interviews from teens, parents, employees, adults from variety of generations. And actually all of the people who contributed to their survey say we know that social media is not great for us and many of us actually wish that it did not exist because it's so detrimental to our well being. So the question of course is why do we keep using it? And the answer is because other people do. Okay, so it's really interesting that we are in this vicious circle a little bit where we know it's not good for us, we understand those detrimental impact on the social media has on us. But because other people are using it, we don't want to stay out of loop. We looking for that connection and we feel we will be missing out on something. So we keep using those social media accounts that might not be serving us. And hey, I completely understand. It took me ages to make a decision to leave Instagram because I really struggled with that specific social media platform. And yeah, it feels weird not to have it because there is this idea that I'm missing out on something because other people using Instagram. But I guess whatever social media account you choose to use, the powerful reminder is belonging beats scrolling. So how do we strengthen belonging on those social media platforms? We are using social media platforms because we're looking for trust, social connection, emotional bonds. And even though social media might be promising these things, they cannot truly offer them. So we need to really think how can we bring that real world belonging into our life more often. So this week I would love you to try Social Media Swap Experiment in honor of International Day of Happiness. Here are some simple experiments inspired by the report themes and it's not about necessarily quitting social media forever, it's just shifting how you use it. So three ideas for you to try. Number one, pick one daily connection action. Before you open an app, send a voice note, invite someone for a coffee, message a friend you miss, chat to a neighbor. So think about how am I connecting with other people in real life. Number two, swap the minutes of passive scrolling for 10 minutes of active connection. So comment, message someone directly, share something meaningful, create something instead of consuming. And number three, start noticing your mood before you scroll, after you scroll and after you connect. Now what are you noticing? How this impacts you. Really interesting to start creating those moments where we act, those moments of reflection when we actually sit down, slow down and reflect and think, okay, is this good for me? Okay, the final bit from the World Happiness Report is to talk about the rankings of the happiest countries. And of course Scandinavian countries is always smashing it in the top three places. But it's worth noting that Costa Rica landed a 4 4th place this year. And this is extra special for me because this year the International Day of Happiness for me was extra special because I got to celebrate alongside other professionals at the Gross Global Happiness Summit in Costa Rica. So I actually have visited one of the happiest places in this world and it was absolutely incredible experience. I had the chance to connect with other individuals across the globe who also are very much passionate about the science of happiness and well being in the world. And it was a massive privilege to talk as one of the speakers about my book the Alphabet of Happiness and of course to experience Costa Rica which in itself as a country with incredible wildlife is just mind blowing. I'll be sharing some my biggest learnings and takeaways from the summit very soon in my next Substack newsletter. So if you're interested to know what kind of what have I experienced? What have I learned? Do sign up, just look for the Happiness Challenge on Substack. In meantime, thank you so much for listening. Until next time, keep connecting. Bye.