Newport and Cardiff named second happiest places in Wales

Using AI facial recognition tools, Online Mortgage Advisor has identified the country’s happiest cities with Newport and Cardiff coming out on top.

The facial recognition tool was used to analyse more than 300,000 geotagged Instagram posts from across the nation to find out the level of happiness of locals and tourists in places across the UK.

They collected two sets of photos: one was found using the hashtag #selfie, and the other set of photos featured hashtags related to having recently purchased a home, for example #newhomeowner.

They then used an AI facial recognition tool to discover the most dominant emotions displayed in the faces in every photo.

Analysis showed that recent homebuyers are considerably happier than the average Instagram user who posts a selfie.

In just over a third (35 per cent) of the #selfies, the AI tool found that happiness was the dominant emotion of the faces on show.

In comparison, happiness was the dominant emotion in a staggering 83 per cent of the photos of recent homebuyers.

Analysis revealed that Cardiff was the happiest place in Wales and the city came out 35.8 per cent above the UK average on the happiness scale.

Newport came second in Wales, scoring 18.4 per cent above the national average.

While Swansea placed third, five per cent above the national average.

Across the UK as whole, the study found that Blackpool is the happiest location in the UK according to Instagram selfies, scoring 67.5 out of 100 on the happiness scale – 71.9 per cent over the national average.

Northern Irish city Derry-Londonderry came in second place with a score of 66.8 out of 100 (70 per cent over the national average).

Rotherham in South Yorkshire tops the ranking of the least happy towns and cities in the UK, according to the Instagram selfies posted there.

The town yielded an average score of just 7 out of 100 on the happiness index, which is a whopping 82.1 per cent below the average UK happiness score.