Grimstagram: Londoners post the world's 'most miserable' selfies
Maybe it's the awful weather, Tube strikes, or the price of a round, but London has been named the most miserable selfie capital in the world.
According to image mapping tool Selfiecity, which carried out the study as part of a digital art project, self-portraits snapped in the big smoke are less likely to show 'happy' characteristics than images shared from New York Berlin, Moscow, Sao Paulo or Bangkok.
The research examined 150,000 Instagram photos taken within 5km of Somerset House and analysed 640 suitable pictures. On a happiness scale of zero to one, London’s selfies scored just 0.55, compared with 0.62 in the other cities.
Interestingly, the stats indicated that women in the capital were twice as likely to take selfies than men, and that the average age of men taking selfies was 28; two years older than the average in other cities.
Commenting on the findings, Lev Manovich, a co-creator of selfiecity, said: “Considering that young Londoners face challenges such as rising property prices and highly competitive job markets, the fact that Londoners are a little older and not always jumping for joy is perhaps not so surprising.
"Yet these are also issues felt in other cities around the world, so it’s interesting to see that Londoners are more honest and they’re not painting an alternate perfect picture on social media, which can often be the case.”
The news follows research which indicates that Instagram to become the platform of choice for marketers in 2016.