While Finland continues to claim the No. 1 spot in the World Happiness Report, the U.S. remains outside of even the top 10 — coming in at No. 23, according to the 2026 edition.
And while the report looks at the well-being of people in age groups across the board, it appears America’s youth is doing even worse. Out of 136 countries, young people ages 15 to 24 in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand rank between 122 and 133 for happiness.
Here’s why young Americans’ wellbeing is “falling off a cliff,” according to Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, which publishes the World Happiness Report.
One big reason the report explored for the low rates of happiness among young Americans is the proliferation of smartphones and social media since the early 2010s.
“Adoption and usage was much faster in the Anglosphere,” says Tara Thiagarajan, founder and chief scientist of research nonprofit Sapien Labs, “because the first language of the internet was English.” The organization recently released its own findings on global health.
