- Hundreds of millions of tweets analysed
- Show global mood swings, beer thoughts
- May reveal global Monday-itis
A STUDY analysing hundreds of millions of messages on Twitter has found people are happiest in the mornings.
But�it all goes downhill after people start getting to work.
Cornell University sociologists used language software to detect the presence of positive words in 509 million tweets from 2.4 million users in 84countries over two years.
Mood peaks were detected early in the day but began to dip mid-morning, about the time most people are starting their workdays.
Is the 9-5 getting you down?� Take our New Work Project workplace survey to see ways to be happier and work better.
Scott Golder, one of the researchers behind the project, told America's ABC News: ?People criticize the Internet for being mundane or filled with gossip, but that?s really not so.
?The Internet records everything, so Twitter is a giant archive of time-coded conversations.?
Golder created a website, timeu.se, which anyone can use to track word usage patterns across the day from the database of tweets analysed. It shows how the word "happy" consistently peaks early in the mornings before falling away.
It also shows the world uses the word "depressed" more often in the evenings, possibly reflecting a global mood swing. Sunday evenings and early Mondays index slightly higher than other days in what could interpreted as evidence of global Monday-itis.
The data graphs reflect social activity through the day. "Lunch" has a beautiful consistent peak in the middle of the day.
References to beer, on the other hand, start to rise later in the afternoon. ABC News reported�there was a seven-hour lag, on average, before a rise in the use of the word "drunk".
A�positive peak was witnessed around midnight, followed by a "sharp drop in NA (negative affect, including distress, fear, anger, guilt, and disgust) during the overnight hours", said the study in the journal, Science.
The highest numbers of good mood words indicating enthusiasm, delight, activeness, and alertness were found on Saturdays and Sundays, "which points to possible effects of work-related stress, less sleep, and earlier wake time".
Naturally enough there are strong references to family on the weekends. It also shows eating habits, with bacon getting a lift each morning but then skyrocketing on Sundays.
Samples from predominantly Muslim countries where the weekends are on different days, such as the United Arab Emirates, showed the same patterns on Fridays and Saturdays as seen in other countries on Saturdays and Sundays.
English was the only language analysed, though users came from across the globe.
However, modern technology's answer to every emotion - the smiley or sad face emoticon - was of little help in the analysis, because "usage was too sparse to be able to detect a consistent pattern", said the study.
