This year’s World Happiness Report focuses on social media and its effects on happiness, especially among young people. It is a topic that looks very different depending on where you are in the world.
To get a ground-level perspective from Kenya, we spoke with the team at the Shamiri Institute, an NGO bringing mental health support to secondary schools across the country. We recently evaluated Shamiri’s cost-effectiveness and included them among our Honourable Mentions, so the timing felt particularly propitious to ask them a few questions about what impact social media has on the young people they help.
What follows is an interview with three members of their team. They are Katherine Venturo-Conerly (KVC), Co-Founder & Scientific Director; Rahim Daya (RD), Chief Growth Officer; and Tom Osborn (TO), Founder & CEO.
Their answers reflect practitioner experience rather than formal research findings, and studies mentioned have not yet been published. These do not necessarily represent HLI’s views.
Kenya is ranked 110th in the 2026 World Happiness Report ranking of happiest countries. For the people you help, what are the main threats to their happiness?
KVC: There are, of course, many types of life problems that we hear about from the youth with whom we work, all of which can be threats to their happiness. We most commonly hear from youth about a few types of problems. One of the very most common of these problems is academic pressure. This can often include pressure to get good grades and scores, and pressure to be admitted to a strong university in order to pursue a lucrative career in the future. Many of the youth with whom we work also report experiencing financial stress. It is common for youth to report that they do not have enough money to pay government fees to attend school consistently or purchase supplies. Some youth also report experiencing broader insecurity around access to food, water, shelter, and other important resources for sustaining and growing a life. One final very common domain of worries is social; many youth experience loneliness, peer pressure, or disagreements with family, peers, and teachers. These different worries often interact in important ways. For example, it is common for youth to feel especially strong pressure to perform academically because of family financial concerns, and for this strong pressure to result in some familial conflict.
Contrary to the West, the World Happiness Report shows the wellbeing of young people (15- to 19-year-olds) is slowly increasing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Do you perceive particular wins for the wellbeing of the young people you help?
TO: We have noticed a few factors that might contribute to wellbeing improvements among younger generations. First, there seems to be some reduction in stigma around discussions of mental wellbeing and mental illness among younger generations. We have often been surprised by how willing high-school students are today to openly discuss symptoms of depression or anxiety, or the importance of social support and creating meaning in life. Second, many young people are very engaged in intentional efforts to improve themselves, their community, and the world, which may be improving their circumstances, skills, and sense of agency. Additionally, though, many measures of wellbeing are originally designed for use in a limited range of high-income, Western countries, and therefore the measures may not accurately reflect wellbeing and its changes among youth in sub-Saharan Africa.
The World Happiness Report also suggests that heavy usage of social media is correlated with lower wellbeing for young people. Is this a problem that comes up in your work? Is social media perceived positively, neutrally, or negatively?
RD: In a [not-yet-published] study of 2,727 secondary school students across Kenya, Shamiri found that adolescents spending more than three hours daily on social media reported significantly higher rates of severe depression (47.86%) and severe anxiety (40.54%) compared to those using it for under 30 minutes. Around 24% of our sample met the threshold for problematic social media use, and 46% showed risky patterns. Effects were strongest among female participants and older adolescents — populations already carrying a disproportionate mental health burden in Kenya.
It is noteworthy that [in this same study] adolescents who used social media for 30–60 minutes daily reported lower rates of severe depression than those with no social media at all. Moderate use appears protective — offering social connection, self-expression, and a sense of belonging that matter enormously in contexts where formal mental health support is scarce. The harm escalates with heavy use, and is significantly mediated by appearance-based comparison: body image comparison was a key pathway through which heavy social media use translated into depression and anxiety in our sample.
How is social media usage changing? How do you think it could change in the future?
RD: Social media usage among the young people we work with is growing quickly, but unevenly. In a [not-yet-published] 2025 study with over 2,500 secondary school students, 62% had smartphone access — the primary gateway to social media. However, we saw access as high as 90% in national schools and drops to 55% in under-resourced sub-county schools. Girls lag behind boys (52% vs 72%), and rural students have substantially lower connectivity than their urban peers.
WhatsApp is the dominant platform in our context: around 46% of students use it at least sometimes, with older adolescents and males more active. This matters because WhatsApp functions differently from image-heavy platforms like Instagram or TikTok — it’s more communication-oriented than comparison-driven, which may partly explain why its mental health associations are more mixed.
Looking ahead, the direction is clear: smartphone penetration will continue rising as device costs fall and digital infrastructure expands across Kenya. Social media will increasingly reach the students who are currently excluded — younger adolescents, girls, and those in rural and lower-resourced schools. These are often the most vulnerable populations, and they will be encountering these platforms without the digital literacy frameworks that wealthier, more connected peers may have developed over time.
This is where we see the greatest risk — and the greatest opportunity. As access democratizes, the question will be how young people engage with social media. Building healthy digital habits early is a preventive investment that could make a real difference at scale.
It seems like the causes and trends of wellbeing for boys and girls might be different. Do you find particular differences in needs and risks between the genders?
KVC: More research on this topic is needed, but there is generally evidence that, during adolescence, girls tend to experience worse mental health on certain dimensions such as depression and anxiety symptoms than boys. We certainly notice both similarities and differences in the pressures faced by girls and boys. Both face pressure to perform well in school, help their families, and identify and pursue a productive life path. Girls are often particularly impacted, though, by experiences such as early and unplanned pregnancy, intimate partner violence, and gender-based harassment or discrimination. These experiences, related to structural sexism, may impact the effectiveness of certain therapeutic skills or techniques by undercutting the control over one’s own life circumstances and outcomes. Boys also experience pressures to behave in traditionally masculine ways and live up to traditionally masculine ideals, which can make it harder for them to seek out help or share vulnerabilities.
We thank the Shamiri Institute team for their time and insights. To learn more about their work, you can read our evaluation. For more on the World Happiness Report, you can explore our favourite findings from the 2026 edition and our reflections on writing a chapter in the 2025 edition.