And the happiest city in the world is… Toledo. That is, if we rely entirely on an investigation by a beauty brand based on artificial intelligence. Along with Toledo, there are two other Spanish cities in the top 20 happiest cities in the world.
Toledo is one of the most beautiful cities in Spain. Apart from the fact that this Spanish city is also on the World Heritage List, it turns out that the happiest people also live here. It should be noted the research was not carried out by a scientific organisation, reports the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. On the contrary, a beauty brand in collaboration with Microsoft researched the happiest city list.
Artificial intelligence gauges happiness on Instagram
Because social media is an integral part of people’s lives it is a viable source for gauging emotions. The brand seized the opportunity to research how happy people are in different cities around the world. Based on 200,000 photos with the hashtag #selfie, moods were polled to discover which cities are the happiest.
Microsoft used artificial intelligence to analyse the moods of people who post selfies on Instagram. They used the same method all over the world to determine happiness in various cities.
Spaniards post a lot of neutral and happy selfies
The analysis found that 40.4% of all selfies taken in Spanish cities rated as “happy”. The most common expression on selfies appears to be neutral moods (57.3%). However, only 2% of selfies in Spain displayed negative emotions.
Three Spanish cities in global top-20
The beauty brand made a top 20 of the ‘happiest cities in the world’. As previously reported, Toledo takes first place. Second place goes to Melbourne and Frankfurt takes third spot. Two Spanish cities, in addition to Toledo, also finished in the top-20: Barcelona took tenth place and Madrid finished sixteenth.
Which are the top 10 happiest cities in Spain?
There’s also a top 10 of happiest cities in Spain. Toledo is the happiest city in Spain in the survey, followed by Plasencia, Marbella, Sevilla, Sotogrande (Cádiz), Malaga, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Madrid and Alicante.
