Tweets show the good, the bad, and the ugly of lockdown

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-01-23 03:00

International

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In South Africa the Covid-19 lockdown had a significant negative impact on happiness. This was measured using sentiment analysis of Twitter posts (between January and June), with every tweet labelled as having either a positive, neutral or negative sentiment. While stay-at-home orders resulted in happier tweets during this period, lockdown regulations such as a ban on alcohol sales, fear of becoming unemployed, and a greater reliance on social media had larger negative effects so that there was a net loss in happiness compared to 2019. Peoples’ happiness also decreased as the number of deaths increased.