The United Nations has published its latest World Happiness Report. It was prepared in partnership with the Gallup Institute, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The report covers the period from 2023 to 2025.
Belarus last appeared in the ranking in 2019, when it was placed 75th. Its best position was 59th.
This time, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark topped the ranking. The top ten also includes Costa Rica, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Israel, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.
At the bottom of the ranking are Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Afghanistan. In total, the list includes 147 countries.
Poland ranks 24th, Lithuania 28th, Latvia 48th, Russia 79th, and Ukraine 111th. Among Belarus’s neighbours, Poland has improved its position, Lithuania, Latvia, and Russia have declined, while Ukraine has remained in the same place as a year earlier.
This year, the report’s authors focused on the impact of social media on happiness levels. They note that in North America and Western Europe, young people are significantly less happy than they were 15 years ago. Over the same period, the use of social media has increased markedly. Many attribute the decline in happiness to social media, although in other regions youth happiness levels have not changed despite similar levels of usage.
“A PISA study conducted among 15-year-olds in 47 countries shows that those who use social media for more than seven hours a day have significantly lower levels of well-being than those who use it for less than one hour. For girls in Western Europe, the difference is almost one full point (out of 10), which is nearly twice as much as for girls in other countries. For boys, the decline is almost half a point in Western Europe and virtually zero in the other 35 countries.
In a sample of American college students, most expressed a wish that social media did not exist. They use it because others do, but would prefer that no one used it at all,” the report says.
Outside the English-speaking world and Western Europe, the relationship between social media and well-being is more positive, though it varies by platform. Data from Latin America show that platforms with algorithmic feeds and influencer engagement are more often negatively associated with life satisfaction than those that primarily facilitate communication.
Country rankings are based on a three-year average of residents’ self-assessed quality of life, obtained through surveys. It is possible that difficulties in conducting surveys in Belarus have resulted in the country not being assessed. In addition to survey data, interdisciplinary experts in economics, psychology, sociology, and other fields attempt to explain differences between countries and over time using factors such as GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, generosity, and perceptions of corruption.
