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Diana Escoffery
Professor Erin Dietel-McLaughlin
Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric
November 14, 2014
Felicidad: How Social Media Influences Happiness in Latin America. A Case Study
Happiness and other emotions have recently been an important focus of attention in a wide
range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology and economics, giving special attention to
the relationship or impact of technology in individual happiness. Recent studies have shown that
social media -especially the use of social networks- is making us unhappy. For example, in a
study made in the University of Michigan, a group of media scholars used experience-sampling
-text messaging people five times a day for two weeks- to examine how Facebook use
influences the two components of subjective well-being: how people feel moment-to-moment
and how satisfied they are with their own lives. According to their research, the more people
used Facebook at one point in time, the worse they felt and the more their satisfaction levels
declined, so rather than enhancing well-being, their findings suggest that Facebook may reduce it
(Kross 1). However, through my research I found numerous sources and studies that seem to
contradict their findings, leading me to believe that under certain conditions, contact through
social media can actually enhance well-being and happiness.
A recent report made by ComScore said that Latin America Leads as "the most socially-engaged
global region" (ComScore), meaning that they are the most active on social networks; and
according to the Gallup-Healthways State of Global Well-Being poll, Latin America is also the

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happiest region in the world, with six out of the top ten happiest countries being in Latin
America. So how is it that these two elements really come together? Can social media actually
make us happier?
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between happiness and social media,
targeting Latin America as the main regional focus point, to find out why Latin American
countries tend to have the highest levels of well-being or happiness. I will start by defining
happiness and then explaining both the State of Global Well-Being poll and the ComScore
Media Metrix Report. Next I will talk about the spread of emotions through social networks.
Additionally, I will show social networking practices in Latin America and compare them to
other regions, especially the "unhappy" countries from the State of Global Well-Being poll. In
the end, I hope to be able to demonstrate the influential role social media plays on happiness,
especially in Latin America.
Defining Happiness.
Happy. Its probably one of the first words that we ever learned to express our emotions, but
what does it really mean and how can we measure it? People seem to understand this term
perfectly well, and have a fairly clear idea that it is about positive emotions and satisfaction with
life. In his book "The Psychology of Happiness", Michael Argyle states that "happiness is found
to be a single factor of experience, but it consists of at least three partly independent factors satisfaction with life, positive effect and negative effect, all of which can be measured by single
questions and surveys." (22) An alternative means of assessing well-being is by social indicators,
like in the case of the State of Global Well-Being Poll.

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State of Global Well-Being Poll
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is the result of two renowned companies: Gallup, a
renowned global performance-management consulting company and Healthways, a well-being
improvement company. Well-being is a concept that captures the important aspects of how
people feel about and experience their daily lives - in other words, well-being encompasses more
than just physical health or economic wealth. The Global Well-Being Index includes five
elements of well-being: purpose (liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve
your goals), social (having supportive relationships and love in your life), financial (managing
your economic life to reduce stress and increase security), community (liking where you live,
feeling safe, and having pride in your community) and physical (having good health and enough
energy to get things done daily). Taking all of these elements into consideration, the "happiest"
countries are in order: Panama, Costa Rica, Denmark, Austria, Brazil, Uruguay, El Salvador,
Sweden, Guatemala and Canada, making Latin America the happiest region in the world. The
"unhappiest" countries are Syria, Afghanistan, Haiti, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad,
Madagascar, Uganda, Benin, Croatia and Georgia, making Sub-Saharan Africa the "unhappiest"
region (see fig. 1&2).

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Figure 1

Figure 2

If we take a deeper look into the results (see fig. 3) we can see that prosperous nations -or the
ones with the highest thriving percentage in the financial category- can be deeply unhappy ones.
One example of this case is Bahrain, a country ranked #10 in financial thriving, but that is ranked
#72 in overall well-being. Similarly, we can see that poverty-stricken nations are often the
happiest ones, or at least a close approximation of it. Also, many of the six Latin American
countries in the top ten do poorly in traditional measures of well-being. One example of this is
Guatemala, a country torn by decades of civil war followed by waves of gang-driven criminality
that give it one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Guatemala sits just above Iraq on the
United Nations' Human Development Index, a composite of life expectancy, education and per
capita income. But it ranks ninth in "happiness" or well-being. We can also see that war-torn

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populations such as those in Syria may have extremely low well-being, but low levels are also
found in countries that are relatively stable, such as Croatia and Italy.

Figure 3

Although none of these elements of well-being seem to relate directly to social media, I found
that most of the "unhappy" countries tend to have some sort of media censorship, while the

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"happiest" typically don't. This leads us to think that social media can actually have an important
relationship to well-being and happiness, as I will further discus later on.
ComScore Media Metrix Report
ComScore is an American Internet analytics company, a global leader in measuring the digital
world and preferred source of digital business analytics, providing marketing data and analytics
to many of the world's largest enterprises, agencies, and publishers. According to their Media
Metrix Report, Latin America leads as the most socially-engaged global region in the world,
meaning that this region has the highest per capita level of social media usage, especially online
social networks. More than 127 million Latin Americans visited a social networking site from a
home or work computer in April 2012, the average visitor spending 7.5 hours on social networks
during the month. The report also shows that Facebook still holds a strong leadership position in
the market, with 114.5 million visitors (a rise of 37% from the previous year). This report
validates my claim that social media, especially social networks, can have an impact on
happiness, since Latin Americans are reported to be the "happiest" people in the world, and they
are also the ones that use social networking sites the most. (ComScore)
Spread of Emotions through Social Networks
Happiness and other emotions spread between people in direct contact, but it is unclear whether
massive online social networks also contribute to this spread. Nicholas Christakis -a social
scientist and physician who conducts research on social factors that affect health, health care, and
longevity, specializing in how networks relate to well-being from Harvard University- recently
conducted a really interesting and innovative experiment with a group of other scholars, in which
they developed a novel method for measuring the contagion of emotional expression. With data

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from millions of Facebook users, they showed that rainfall not only has the ability to influence
the emotional content of their status messages, but it also affects the status messages of friends in
other cities, even if they are not experiencing rainfall. According to their studies, for every
person affected directly, rainfall alters the emotional expression of one to two other people,
suggesting that online social networks can magnify the intensity of global emotional synchrony.
They also found that positive and negative emotional expressions tend to have an inhibitory
effect on one another. Each additional positive post decreases the number of friends' negative
posts by 1.80% and each additional negative post decreases the number of friends' positive posts
by 1.26%, meaning that positive messages appear to have a stronger effect. (Coviello et al.1-7)
Furthermore, in collaboration with James Fowler -a Professor at the University of California,
San Diego- Christakis wrote a book called Connected about the power of social networks or in
their own words "how your friends' friends' friends affect everything you feel, think, and do", in
which they argue that emotions, and specifically happiness are highly contagious through social
networks. Most of us are already aware of the direct effect we have on our own friends and
family, how our actions can make them happy or sad, but we rarely consider that everything we
think, feel, do, or say can spread far beyond people we know and vice-versa. They also argue
that while the social networks formed online may be abstract, large, complex and supermodern,
they also reflect universal and fundamental human tendencies. The purpose of social networks is
to transmit positive and desirable outcomes, the spread of bad behaviors or emotions such as
sadness or anger is a side effect, a price we must pay for a greater good. (Christakis and Fowler
295)

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Social Media Around the World
There has been a rise in the usage of social networks around the world in the past few years.
However, there are variations between geographical groups when it comes to a comparison of
how much time they spend on the social web. Israel leads as the most active country, followed
by Argentina and Russia. On a larger scale, Latin Americans emerge as the biggest addicts of
networking online in terms of time spent per user, averaging 7.5 hours per month (from Brazil at
13.3 hours a month, to Colombia at almost six hours a month), even though roughly a third of
Latin Americans have access to the Internet. In contrast, those in the Asia Pacific averaged under
3 hours per month. Today, five of the ten most socially-engaged countries are located in Latin
America. (ComScore).
Latin America had 159 million internet users in 2013, a rise of 21% from the previous year.
Forty-two per cent of these users were from Brazil, while 15% were from Mexico, 11% from
Argentina, and 7% from Colombia. Mobile internet is increasingly becoming a popular way to
access the Internet and social media in Latin America, with eMarketer predicting that there will
be 120.8 million mobile internet users in Brazil alone by 2017. Overall, an impressive 94.1% of
internet users in Latin America are using social networks. ("Social Media in Latin America").
Another aspect to consider when studying the impact of social media is censorship. With
democracy having replaced dictatorship everywhere but Cuba in Latin America in the past 20
years, the region has been able to banish most of its censorship and now benefits from media
freedom ("Shooting the Messenger; Media Freedom in Latin America" 1). Similarly, Canada,
Denmark, Austria and Sweden -the remaining countries from the "happy" list- show no signs of
media censorship or filtering. Meanwhile all of the top ten "unhappy" countries show either

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partial or radical media and specially Internet censorship, with Syria, Afghanistan and the
Democratic Republic of Congo showing some of the highest censorship rates in the world (FH
Freedom of the Press Report; OpenNet Initiative). Brian Leatherman, a scholar from American
University did an interesting study on Internet censorship and he states that "censorship is a
possible way for the powerful to terminate individualism, wisdom, and the marketplace of ideas
[...] Preventing individuals from exploring others thoughts and ideas is a way to prevent the
expansion of knowledge and power." (Leatherman, Internet Censorship and the Freedom of
Speech). Like Leatherman, I think that while some government regulation may be good at times,
depriving individuals of their freedom of speech works against everyones pursuit of life, liberty,
and ultimately, happiness.
Latin Americans, Social Media and Happiness.
Throughout my research, I discovered many different factors that can influence happiness. As
shown by the State of Global Well-Being Poll, happiness doesn't necessary equal prosperity or
economic growth. Happiness is about having a set of factors -specially purpose, relationships,
community and health- that allow us to achieve higher levels of personal satisfaction with our
lives. Happiness is also a state of mind. With the example of Latin American people we can
clearly see that having a positive, upbeat attitude can definitely increase our levels of happiness
and help us cope better with life's ups and downs. Also, we can see that emotions are easily
spread through social networks and that specifically happiness is the one that spreads and is able
to influence people the most. It makes sense that with Latin Americans being the happiest people
they would post overall more positive things or send happier messages on their social networks,
thus increasing their friends' happiness and even their friends' friends' friends, creating a neverending cycle of happiness. Like the old saying goes, when you smile, the world smiles with you.

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Works Cited
Argyle, Michael. The Psychology of Happiness. 2nd ed. London ; New York : Routledge, 2001.

Christakis, Nicholas A., and James H. Fowler. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social
Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Print.

"ComScore Media Metrix Report: Latin America, most Socially-Engaged Global Region." Health
& Beauty Close-Up (2012)Print.

Coviello, Lorenzo, et al. "Detecting Emotional Contagion in Massive Social Networks." PloS
one 9.3 (2014): e90315.

"Freedom of the Press 2013". Freedom House., 21 May 2013. Web. 11 Nov. 2014

Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. State of Global Well-Being. Rep. Gallup-Healthways, 2013.

Web. 27 Oct. 2014.

Kross Ethan, et al. "Facebook use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-being in Young Adults".
PloS one 8.8 (2013): e69841. Print.

Leatherman, Brian. "Internet Censorship and the Freedom of Speech." Internet Censorship and the
Freedom of Speech. Washington University, 19 Dec. 1991. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

"Shooting the Messenger; Media Freedom in Latin America." The Economist (US) 397.8705
(2010): 45. Print.

"Social Media in Latin America." 4Ps Business & Marketing (2012)Print.

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"Summarized global Internet filtering data spreadsheet". OpenNet Initiative., 29 October 2012.
Web. 11 Nov. 2014