Oct 5, 2009
GNH Index (gross national happiness)
Earlier today, while working, my Twitter feed refreshed with a tweet from Facebook asking how happy I was. Well, actually how happy the nation was… Apparently, for the past several years, Facebook (with the help of the University of Oregon psychology department) has been compiling data from user’s status updates on the “happiness index” of the nation, dutifully called the Gross National Happiness Index. So very interesting.
According to the blog post on Facebook:
Every day, through Facebook status updates, people share how they feel with those who matter most in their lives. These updates are tiny windows into how people are doing. They’re brief, to the point, and descriptive of what’s going on this week, today or right now.
Grouped together, these updates are indicative of how we are collectively feeling. At Facebook, we’re always looking for ways to help people better understand the world around them, and we’re interested in how people express their emotions with one other and the world. So earlier this year, data scientists at Facebook started a project to measure the overall mood of people from the United States on Facebook, based on the sentiment expressed in status updates.
The result was an index that measures how happy people on Facebook are from day-to-day by looking at the number of positive and negative words they’re using when updating their status. When people in their status updates use more positive words—or fewer negative words—then that day as a whole is counted as happier than usual.
According to Facebook, the happiest day in the last two years was the celebration of President Obama being elected, and the saddest moment was the crash of the Asian stock market/death of Heath Ledger (happened on the same day).
Image courtesy of Facebook
So, what think you? Do you think measuring “happy” or “sad” words in status updates is a good measure of the overall “gross happiness” of Americans?
Today’s non-Point: Post what you feel on your status so the GNHI is more accurate!
I'm not sure of the accuracy of this type of research. The graph showed Christmas as a "happy day" but more suicides are committed on Christmas (and around Christmas time) than any other day of the year….
Remember that this only takes into consideration what people post in their status updates. So, unless you say you're going to "kill yourself" in your update, that wouldn't affect the GNHI.