Eve is here. What a surprise! Addicting children to social media is a weapon of class warfare. It treats them unfairly, negatively impacting their ability to function in school and daily life, and can even impose severe and lasting mental health costs. Also, remember that harming your users is inherently built into your business model. It increases engagement by making users, especially young people, feel insecure about their appearance or likability.
Roger Fernández-Urbanó, Researcher Ramón y Cajal (Tenure Track), Department of Sociology, University of Barcelona: María Rubio-Cabañes, Postdoctoral Researcher, Center d’Estudis Demographics, CED-CERCA, Autonomous University of Barcelona: and Pablo Gracia, Research Professor of Sociology at the Center d’Estudis Demographics, CED-CERCA, Autonomous University of Barcelona. Originally published on The Conversation
As social media becomes more central to young people’s lives, there is growing concern about its impact on young people’s mental health. However, public discussions and interventions tend to treat adolescents as a single, homogeneous group. We often ignore the fact that social media use does not affect all young people in the same way, nor does it have a similar impact on their well-being.
A recent chapter in the World Happiness Report 2026, published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network in collaboration with the University of Oxford, investigated how problematic social media use is related to the well-being of young people from different socio-economic backgrounds.
We studied 43 countries across six broad regions: Anglo-Celtic, Caucasian-Black Sea, Central and Eastern Europe, Mediterranean, Northern Europe, and Western Europe, primarily covering European countries and their neighboring regions.
Using data from more than 330,000 young people, we found clear and consistent patterns. This means that higher levels of problematic social media use, or compulsive or uncontrolled engagement with social media, are associated with lower levels of well-being.
Teens who report more problematic use tend to experience more psychological complaints, such as feeling depressed, nervous, irritable, and having trouble sleeping. They also have lower life satisfaction, which measures how positively they evaluate their lives overall.
This pattern is present in all countries studied, but its strength varies by country. This is particularly pronounced in Anglo-Celtic countries such as the United Kingdom and Ireland, but is relatively weak in the Caucasus-Black Sea region.
Socioeconomic background matters
The story doesn’t end with geography. Globally, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to be affected by problematic social media use than their more advantaged backgrounds.
This means that socio-economic status, i.e. the material and social resources available to households, such as income and living conditions, actively shapes the risks and opportunities that young people experience as a result of their online environment.
The relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and psychological complaints and life satisfaction. Author own, author provided (cannot be reused)
Interestingly, these inequalities are particularly pronounced when looking at life satisfaction. Differences between socio-economic groups are smaller when it comes to psychological complaints, but there is more clarity and consistency in how adolescents evaluate their lives as a whole.
One possible reason is that life satisfaction is more sensitive to social comparison. Social media constantly exposes young people to benchmarks (what others have, are doing, and have achieved) and can amplify differences in perceived opportunities and resources.
At the same time, these patterns are not the same everywhere. For example, socio-economic differences in psychological complaints tend to be modest in most regions, including continental European countries such as France, Austria and Belgium, but are more clearly observed in Anglo-Celtic countries such as Scotland and Wales.
In contrast, although socio-economic disparities in life satisfaction are found in most regions, they tend to be smaller in Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Cyprus and Greece.
The relationship between SES, social media use, and mental health complaints in different geographic areas. Author’s own, author provided (do not reuse)
growing problem
We also investigated how these patterns evolved over time. From 2018 to 2022, the link between problematic social media use and decreased well-being among adolescents became stronger.
This suggests that the risks associated with problematic use may have increased in recent years, perhaps reflecting the increasing role of digital technologies in young people’s daily lives, particularly during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Importantly, this intensification is affecting youth across socio-economic groups in much the same way in most regions. In other words, inequality remains but has not increased over this period.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution
Public discussions about social media and mental health often treat adolescents as a single demographic group, but our results point to a more complex reality. Problematic social media use is associated with lower well-being across countries, but its impact is shaped by social realities. It depends on where the youth lives and the resources available to them.
Not all teenagers experience the digital world in the same way, and not all teenagers are equally equipped to handle its pressures. Recognizing this is essential to designing policies that are not only effective but also equitable, and ensuring that interventions reach the youth most vulnerable to digital risks.
