Tracking Happiness

The majority of people use technology at least once a day, making it easy to try to track happiness using technology. At first I didn’t think that happiness would be something that could be measured. How can it be measured if it’s a personal emotion it depends on how the person is feeling which is usually not the same all the time. All these websites talk about how they want to measure happiness by tracking what they do in their daily life. Different people have different ideas and approaches in how to measure a person’s well-being which will eventually lead to happiness.

In the first two websites they used an app named The H(app)athon App which is used to track a person’s values. They believe that the actions that are taken affect an individual’s happiness. When the app is downloaded they ask you to take a survey. The survey that is taken matches the individual with actives that they could do that will help boost up their happiness. The app also helps to see where an individual’s life is out of balance and then try to balance it out for it could benefit the well-being. In my opinion I think that that this app will help a couple of people but not everyone. It will help some people because some people may actually take it serious and follow what the app says to do which will make them feel like they are improving their well-being. It may not help others because not everyone will be consistent or truthful with the app. Also, not everyone is the same, what makes one person happy may not me the same for the other, it is not one size fits all.

The next two websites mention on how Santa Monica is trying to measure well-being and making it a city that is truly connected to its people. They believe that by reflecting how the community is back to the community, the community will realize and make it easier to improve its well-being. The Wellbeing project is researching all around the world to understand the strengths and challenges people face in their lives. Although, Santa Monica is beautiful, has nice weather, and feels like paradise, it is number two of the top ten most stressed out cities in America. It is in the top two because there is a lot of traffic and living there is too expensive. I think that by people taking action and by trying to improve wellbeing there is going to be a positive change. The more people work together on this project the more of an outcome there will be because that will mean that a lot of people are willing to work to improve their happiness. If everyone works together in Santa Monica and achieves their project on well-being it will have a great outcome in the whole world.

The last website talks about how happiness is influenced depending the geographical location that the person is currently in. For instance, the saddest part in New York City is Maspeth Park, Brooklyn because of its pollution and lack on sanitation. The happiest place in New York City is Times Square because it is a place where tourist go filled with excitement and joy feeling they have arrived to New York. This was all measured by looking at the tweets people have posted and analyzing their location at the moment. In my opinion that was a very smart way to track happiness. People usually tweet what they feel with no pressure or thought that they are being evaluated on how happy they are. Therefore, I feel like they will be much more truthful with their emotions. It is also a very smart way to track happiness because now people tweet more than ever. Technology has become a daily routine to mostly everyone. As technology continues to improve and advance there will be more accurate measurement on individual’s happiness and on what makes an individual truly happy.