A new report has placed Vancouverites among the happiest people in the world — but its methodology may leave something to be desired.
Using an AI facial recognition tool, Online Mortgage Advisor analyzed over 300,000 geotagged Instagram posts from 114 countries to compile a ranking of the "happiest cities for locals and tourists." Why a mortgage company needed to know where the happiest people are wasn't included in the report.
To find the overall "happiest" locations, the company says it collected a set of photos that feature the hashtag #selfie in August 2021.
"The AI tool discovers the most dominant emotions displayed in the faces in every photo, which allowed us to rank the happiest and least happy locations around the world," explains a news release.
Microsoft Azure analyses clear photos of faces and automatically provides a score on the levels of different emotions present. Detectable emotions include anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutral.
For its analysis, the company combined the negative emotions (anger, contempt, disgust, fear, sadness) into one category "negative."
Do it for the gram
Of course, Cheshire cat-sized grins may look great on social media, but they may not be the best determinant of happiness...or really any mental state ("do it for the gram," anyone?).
But as far removed from reality as social media may be, Vancouver made it up pretty high on the list of perceived happiness.
According to the report, Vancouver is the fourth happiest city in the world, with tourists and locals scoring a staggering 45.8 per cent happier than the global average. Our coastal city even beat popular tourist hotspots, such as Paris, London and New York.
Chicago was crowned the world's happiest city, however. Locals and tourists in the American metropolis were 63.7 per cent happier than the global average.
Melbourne had the second happiest people in the world, followed by Frankfurt. Vancouver just beat Karachi, Pakistan.
On the other end of the spectrum, the company found that South Korea's capital, Seoul, had the unhappiest people in the world. Based on this methodology, locals and tourists in Seoul were 35.8 per cent unhappier than the global average.
