Excessive social media use linked to declining youth wellbeing — Report

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The World Happiness Report has found that higher levels of social media use are generally associated with lower life satisfaction among young people, particularly in English-speaking countries, while moderate use may have positive effects.

The report on Saturday identified a significant decline in youth wellbeing in a group of English-speaking countries—referred to as NANZ (North America, Australia, and New Zealand)—with similar but less severe patterns observed in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

According to the report, “cellphone access to the internet had a positive partial correlation with individual life evaluations in every global region, except in NANZ, where the coefficient was negative and large.”

It added that the UK and Ireland also showed “a significant negative relation, about one-third as large as the NANZ countries.” Punch