PENNSYLVANIA, USA — Pennsylvania was recently ranked the number four least happiest state in the nation in a new study conducted by researchers at HouseFresh, a company made up of indoor air quality experts.
The study began, the research states, when these experts started to notice how often people post selfies on Instagram. They decided to conduct the study in order to find out just how many smiles on the platform were genuine.
"Happiness may be hard to find, but it’s even harder to fake," the study states. "A generation of internet users has grown up with everyone always looking happy on Instagram, and they’ve figured out how to tell the difference. No matter how much you rehearse or how many discarded snaps end up in your phone’s trash, people have learned to piece together the clues from your selfies and figure out how you really feel."
Here's how the company determined the rankings:
Using Microsoft's facial recognition software, Azure, researchers used a database of Instagram selfies from every state and the 100 biggest U.S. cities to see which are the happiest places to live. Azure then used these facial recognition tools to place numerical estimates on emotions based on characteristics and expressions, the study results explain.
In terms of the happiest cities and states, researchers used the FaceAPI happiness score to average all of the scores in a given location.
Doing all this, Pennsylvania fell to the 47th spot. It was only beaten by Indiana, New Jersey, and California.
Utah, on the other hand, was determined to be the happiest state.
