It’s been more than 10 years since the first-ever World Happiness Report was released in 2012. Since then, the United Nations has released an annual ranking of the world’s happiest countries: the places where the populations are, on average, more content than in other destinations. In that time, many nations have gone through a multi-year pandemic, natural disasters and wars. But the UN and governments across the globe remain committed to finding out what exactly makes people happier so they can develop policies to increase wellbeing.
This research, released on Thursday, March 19, 2026 (the day before World Happiness Day), is based on a three-year average of each population’s assessment of their quality of life. It takes into account six key factors that impact happiness: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity, and the absence of corruption. It also investigates the distribution of happiness within countries. Spoiler alert: countries where the “happiness gap” is smaller—where the population has a similar experience of and access to the six factors listed above—tend to be happier overall.
One of the biggest takeaways from the 2026 report is the fact that social media use is contributing to a “drop in wellbeing among young people in English-speaking countries,” particularly in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; and especially among girls. In fact, “one international survey of 15-year-olds in nearly 50 countries suggests heavy social media use is associated, on average, with a significant drop in wellbeing among the students surveyed.” While the report finds that younger people who use social media for less than one hour per day report the highest levels of wellbeing, it also shows that those wellbeing levels are higher than for those who do not use social media at all.
This story has been updated with new information since its original publication date. A version of this article was originally published on Condé Nast Traveller UK. Additional reporting by Hannah Towey and Sarah James.
How does the study work?
Below, we talk about lots of the factors that might explain the variation in self-reported happiness between countries globally. The World Happiness Report doesn’t construct its list based on these factors and measures. Instead the people polled provide self-assessments of their own lives by placing themselves on the Cantril Scale. This is basically assessing where you would put yourself on a ladder of self-satisfaction: the top of the ladder, or 10, would be the happiest you can be, while the bottom of the ladder, or 0, would be the least happy you can be.
The World Happiness Report then measures and investigates a number of factors that could correlate with the variations in the average happiness of each country’s population, which we discuss below. While experts explain the results using the six factors stated above, it is important to remember that the ranking itself is based on the answers given by people at the time of questioning, so it is not necessarily taken into account or mediated by wider cultural, political, or societal incidents.
