In many countries, teenagers are happier than previous generations. But in Australia and much of Western Europe, the opposite is true, Simon Kuestenmacher writes.
If you look only at the headlines, the world feels like it is falling apart. Wars, cost-of-living pressures, political polarisation.
Yet the data tells a different story. On average, humanity is becoming happier.
The latest World Happiness Report shows that in most countries, life satisfaction has improved in the past two decades.
Eastern Europe is catching up quickly. Large parts of the developing world are making steady progress. Even after a pandemic and multiple global shocks, most people rate their lives more positively today than they did in the late 2000s.
At the very top, nothing much has changed.
Finland remains No.1, followed by a familiar Nordic pack.
These countries continue to combine wealth, social trust and functioning institutions in a way that delivers consistently high life satisfaction.
So far, so reassuring.
But buried inside the report is a far more unsettling trend. It is not about countries. It is about age. It is a generational decline in happiness.
In most of the world, young people are doing fine. In many places, they are even happier than previous generations at the same age.
But in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada, along with much of Western Europe, the opposite is true. Young people have become significantly less happy in the past 15 years. In global rankings of youth wellbeing trends, these countries now sit near the bottom.
Let that sink in. Some of the richest, safest and most opportunity-rich societies in human history are producing some of the least happy young people.
That is not a small statistical quirk. It is a structural shift. Why are young people in rich Western countries unhappy?
Naturally, our attention turns to the usual suspect: Social media.
The report takes this question seriously and does not offer a simplistic, one-dimensional answer. Social media is not universally bad. But the pattern is remarkably consistent. Light users tend to report the highest life satisfaction. Heavy users report the lowest.
Teenagers who spend seven hours or more a day on social media are significantly less happy than those who spend less than an hour. The effect is particularly strong for girls, and particularly strong in Western countries.
But here is where the story becomes more interesting. The same technology produces very different outcomes depending on where you are in the world.
The most confusing young people live in Latin America. There, young people use social media heavily and still report high levels of wellbeing.
In the Middle East and North Africa, use is also high, yet youth happiness has not declined in the same way.
Meanwhile, in Australia (and in our Western and rich peer countries) youth wellbeing has fallen sharply despite similar levels of screen time.
If social media were the sole cause, we would expect a uniform global pattern. We do not see that. Instead, we see interaction effects.
Social media amplifies underlying social conditions rather than replacing them.
How social media is used matters an awful lot. Platforms that facilitate communication and connection are associated with higher life satisfaction. Platforms that revolve around passive scrolling, influencer content and algorithm-driven feeds are associated with lower wellbeing, especially at high use levels.
In plain terms, talking to friends is good for you, whether in real life of online. Watching strangers live better lives than you is bloody awful for you.
The paradoxical truth about social media is that many users say they would prefer a world without it, but they continue using it because everyone else does. Opting out comes at a social cost. Staying in makes you unhappy.
This is not a tech problem alone. It is a social dynamics problem.
The report also highlights something that rarely makes it into the public debate (probably because it’s so obvious, once you think about it).
Real-world belonging matters far more than screen time. Measures such as feeling part of a school community have a much larger impact on life satisfaction than changes in social media use. In some cases, the effect is several times stronger.
That finding should give policymakers pause. Restricting social media access (as we have done in Australia) might help at the margins, but rebuilding social connection offline is likely to matter much more.
The report also points to other warning signs.
Negative emotions (such as worry and sadness) are rising globally. Positive emotions still dominate, but the gap is narrowing in some places.
In Western countries, younger generations are losing the traditional advantage they used to have over older cohorts in terms of happiness.
At the same time, the foundations of wellbeing are shifting. As I’ve mentioned in previous columns about Australia, trust in institutions (political parties, banks, big business, church) is weakening.
Face-to-face interaction is declining. Social comparison is becoming constant and global. The digital world does not replace the physical one – it competes for your attention.
Australia sits right in the middle of this story. We still rank highly in overall happiness. We are a wealthy, stable and successful country by almost any measure. Yet our young people are among those who have had the largest declines in wellbeing.
That tension should make us uncomfortable. It suggests that economic success alone is no longer enough to sustain happiness across generations.
The easy narrative is to blame smartphones, blanket-ban social media, and call it a day. The harder and more useful conclusion is that we are dealing with a broader shift in how young people experience the world. Social media is part of it, but not the whole story.
We have built a society that is more connected than ever and, for many young people, less socially grounded.
The digital layer is always on. The local layer is weakening and deserves our utmost attention.
The World Happiness Report offers a quiet, but powerful reminder.
Globally, progress is real. The world is getting happier, but that progress is uneven and in some of the places we would expect to lead, it is going backwards for the next generation.
If we want to understand the future of our society, we should spend less time looking at country rankings and more time asking a simple question.
Why are our teenagers not as happy as they used to be?
Here some ways that might improve youth wellbeing in Australia:
These reforms point in the same direction: Less focus on restricting teenagers, and more focus on rebuilding the environments that support a good life with lots of human connection.
Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia. His podcast, Demographics Decoded, explores the world through the demographic lens. Follow Simon on Twitter (X), Facebook, or LinkedIn.
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The world is getting happier. Western teenagers are not – InDaily South Australia
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