Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Nevadans are top Twitter users, but researcher says they’re not happy about it

It’s already known that Nevada is apparently ranked first in the nation when it comes to active Twitter users.

But are Nevadans tweeting about happy things? A Cambridge University doctorate student seems to have the answer: No.

Alex Davies, an Australian engineering student, gathered data to rank countries and U.S. states' levels of happiness based entirely on tweets.

According to his tweet-based research, Nevada is the unhappiest state in the country while Tennessee is the happiest.

Davies looked at “happy words” and “sad words” by region, including emoticons. The most used “happy words” in Nevada are “feliz” “:-)” “happy” and “love.” The “sad words” are a bit more telling: “sad” “:(“ “snow” and even “sahara” were listed.

Davies writes on his website, where the project is hosted, that the words are not entirely indicative of people’s feelings about a specific subject.

“For example, Justin Beiber may make people sad, or people may be sad that they missed tickets to his most recent concert,” Davies writes.

The five happiest states, according to the data, are Tennessee, Colorado, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Following Nevada, the unhappiest states were Mississippi, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Illinois.

Looking globally at the map, Germany was the happiest country while the U.S. ranked fourth. The top positive sentiments for the U.S. were “nice,” “best,” “hey,” and “smile,” while the negative sentiments were “migraine,” “preciso,” “miss,” and “wahh.”

Davies only ranked countries and U.S. states that had sufficient levels of Twitter participation. Maine, New Hampsire, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho weren't ranked.

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