WYOMING – A wildfire burning at the edge of town in Jackson. Coal mines closing down, sending hundreds to the unemployment line. Flesh-eating algae blooms posing threat to dog, cattle and humans.

Most stressed states chart (Babylon Health)

No problem.

Wyoming is still the most chill state in the US, according to a new survey conducted by Babylon Health. Researchers analyzed more than five million tweets over a two-week period to find out where Americans are most likely to tweet about stress, frustration and anxiety. Their findings include data from every US state and the 100 most populated cities in the country.

According to the tweet analysis, Wyoming is the least stressed state in the US with only 7.72% of tweets classified as ‘stress’ related. The least populous state in the US was followed by Delaware, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Alaska is the most stressed state in the US, with as many as 11.69% of tweets classified as stressed out.

Babylon Health invented a special tool called TensiStrength. Rankings are based on lowest to highest along the TensiStrength scale. In general, researchers found mornings were the most stressful time of the day; Fridays the most anxious day of the week.

Stress-level by state in US (Babylon Health)

What is TensiStrength?

TensiStrength estimates the strength of stress and relaxation expressed in short texts by analysing the terms used that are related to stress, frustration, anxiety, anger and negativity. These texts are then ranked on two scales:

  • -1 (no stress) to -5 (very highly stressed)
  • 1 (no relaxation) to 5 (highly relaxed)

The tool was developed by Mike Thelwall, Professor of IT at Wolverhampton University, and has been optimised for general short social web texts, such as tweets.

According to Thelwall, TensiStrength’s terms are not only synonyms for stress, anxiety and frustration but also terms related to anger and negative emotions because stress can be a response to negative events and can cause negative emotions.

What does a ‘stressed’ tweet look like?

The below texts are examples of tweets that are ranked -5 (very highly stressed) on the TensiStrength scale:

  • “My job makes me f****** anxious and not even working right now…”
  • “My back hurts when in the middle of my work. My back hurts horribly when on my days off…”
  • “Who else is SUPER depressed about the state of healthcare as shown by the poor broke…”