The World Happiness Report, published this week, offers several insights into the well-being of young adults around the world.
Anat Fanti, a happiness and well-being researcher at Bar-Ilan University, says one of the most striking findings this year is the well-being crisis unfolding among young adults under 25 in English-speaking countries, as reflected in their low life satisfaction scores, placing the United States in 60th place and Canada in 71st place, for example. Young Israelis ranked in the respectable 3rd place in the world in life satisfaction scores.
"The 2026 report is dedicated to the impact of social media use on the well-being of young people. An entire chapter was written on the subject by psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his research partner," Fanti explains. "Although levels of social media use in English-speaking countries are similar to those in other countries, the largest declines in well-being among young adults were recorded in English-speaking countries, particularly the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, while the average among young adults in the rest of the world actually rose."
Is the negative correlation between well-being and social media use equally true for all platforms?
"Not exactly. It applies particularly to platforms driven by algorithmically selected content, like TikTok, that pushes young people to endlessly scroll through negative or distressing content online. Such platforms tend to show a distinctly negative correlation with mental well-being, whereas platforms designed to enable and maintain human-initiated social connection, like WhatsApp, actually show a positive correlation with life satisfaction. Haidt drew firm conclusions about restricting the use of mobile phones and social media, especially at young ages.
"In general, research links the rapid adoption of social media in the early 2010’s and increased mental health problems among young people in Western countries. That's a strong basis for the argument that the digital arena is not just ‘background noise’ but part of the reason for the broader crisis among the young. Israel is also considering gradually adopting these conclusions."
So basically, the algorithm generates revenue for the platforms while generating anxiety and insecurity in young people?
"The report argues that the link between social media and youth well-being depends heavily on both the type of platform and the broader social context. They included data from an international survey conducted among 15-year-olds in 50 countries, which showed that heavy social media use is significantly associated with a decline in mental well-being - and this holds true across all platform types. But other factors, such as social connections and a sense of belonging to one's school or community, are linked to meaningful improvements in young people's self-reported life satisfaction."
Is that what explains the high ranking of Israeli youth in life satisfaction? Because social media use among young Israelis is also high, it should have a negative effect.
"It's not that Israeli youth are unaffected - anxiety and depression among young people are on the rise here too. But in Israel, at 18, you join the military and your life changes. There's the moment when the young adult from the social media world meets real life in its full intensity, especially in the past 2.5 years of war. Young people here can't really live in the illusion of social media - they're forced to confront reality, which is complex and not easy at all."
"That's why you see the exaggerated frustration of young adults in English-speaking Western countries - outrage over 'micro-aggressions' or anger at a professor for not spoon-feeding everything they expected, forcing everyone around them to walk on eggshells. The state of mind is different. In Israel, the reality encountered within the IDF is harsh, but ultimately produces something far healthier - far more communal and meaningful. In 2025, Israeli youth ranked first in the world in the quality of their social connections. That contributes enormously to happiness and well-being."
Is the Israeli reality addressed in the report?
"Not sufficiently, in my opinion. When Israeli youth rank third in the world in life satisfaction while living in a country battered by war, fear, and grief, yet still report high levels of happiness, I conclude that even though the question of a sense of meaning in life isn't directly asked in the Happiness Report, it's present in the background. Young adults 25 and under in Israel are those serving in the military and doing reserve duty, carrying an enormous weight of responsibility towards the entire population."
"That’s the sense of meaning and clear purpose that Israeli existence provides, in addition to the fact that Israel is a country with an extraordinary family and friendship infrastructure, where everyone feels that every soldier in the IDF is their own child. Young adults in the US are probably not as ready for the tough world as Haidt’s books The Anxious Generation and The Coddling of the American Mind suggest. In that sense, American young people have been shaped with too little real-world independence and too much mediated, risk-averse, and phone-saturated experience, and that combination is making them more anxious, more fragile, and less resilient. The struggle to leave the warm home environment, combined with absorbing much of their 'knowledge' from digital platforms rather than through real-world interactions, destabilizes their mental state."
Let's go back to the English-speaking countries, which have seen quite a few anti-Israel demonstrations since October 7th. Do you see a connection to their enormous decline in the happiness report?
"The link hasn't been proven through research yet, but I do feel it is an explanatory variable. In a destabilized state of mind, it's easy to manufacture a false sense of meaning, fueled by hatred toward a country they cannot even locate on a globe. The demonstrators were Gen Z. The report shows that in Europe, the link between internet use and mental well-being is particularly negative among Gen Z, which also recorded the sharpest decline in interpersonal trust and institutional trust, alongside a growing sense of social activism. The report also shows that heavy social media use is linked to greater stress, depression symptoms, and the feeling that life is worse for them than it was for their parents. The negative impact worsens when young people rely on social media as their primary news source, use multiple platforms, and follow various influencers."
"When I look at the cumulative impact of the circles of hostility that feed anti-Israel protests, this negatively affects Jews’ and Israelis’ well-being around the world. But what about these young people in the US? Their encampments, sieges of university buildings, wearing masks to avoid identification, resemble violent youth organizations far more than the Boy Scouts."
"How did they reach a state where the idea of Israel unites them in action against it as if it were the most despised bully in the world, even after the war in Gaza ended, and with Israel and the US fighting Iran, which is the real terror inflicting power in the world? The answer, in my view, comes in part from the general mental state of young people in those countries, and in part from the influence of the algorithmic 'knowledge' sources they consume."
Are you optimistic about the younger generation in Israel?
"Israeli young adults are not only ranked third in the world in well-being and happiness, but they are also ranked first among all age groups in Israel. That means they are optimistic and hopeful, and that means we should all be optimistic and hopeful too, because these young people are our future. They are negatively affected by social media like every other young person in the world, but in the end, they are more grounded through real-life situations, their friends, their family, and the entire country’s social support and mutual generosity. Someone should tell Jonathan Haidt to study the Israeli case and draw conclusions from it for the rest of the world."