When something pleasant happens to Mary Hanks, the first thing she does is pull out her phone.

She'll thumb a quick shorthand cheer on her Twitter account, usually to the tune of: "Just saw a moose!" or "Just heard a great sermon!" or "It's beautiful and sunny!"

Because it takes a few seconds to tell people all around the world she's happy.

And why the heck wouldn't the North Idaho playwright jump all over that?

"It's cool that I can say encouraging things and read encouraging things that make us connect," said Hanks, a former Hayden resident who now lives outside Blanchard. "I know I'm talking with people maybe in the city, and it's nice just to say positive things about living in the country and country life."

Apparently when Idaho residents are happy and they know it and really want to show it, they express it in under 140 characters.

Idaho is the seventh happiest state in the nation, according to an analysis of rather unusual data by the Vermont Complex Systems Center: The content of 10 million tweets nationwide.

The analysis, calculated with a complex algorithm, honed in on happy words tweeted like "love," "hope" and "rainbow," as well as bummer vocab like "damn," "hate" and "ugly."

Researchers measured mood by the frequency of such words in geotagged tweets, and rated states accordingly.

Looks like Idaho tweets are bursting with exuberant diction. Or so says the analysis, available at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.3299.pdf.

Hanks isn't surprised.

It's the wave-at-strangers-on-the-street country courtesy she thinks warms Idahoans' hearts.

"Maybe having more things to do in nature, that sort of thing, actually does make us happier," she said.

New kind of data

What puts a smile on the face of Dr. Alan Unis, medical director for the youth services program at Kootenai Medical Center, is the study itself.

Analyzing tweets is part of a new era of data collection, he said.

One where researchers harvest information not by knocking on doors, but by scrutinizing common Google searches, Facebook entries, tweets.

"They're extracting, from your patterns of use, meaningful information about the popularity of a product, emerging markets and other things. Like now, happiness," said Unis, who conducts psychiatric clinical trials. "To me, it's very exciting."

Granted, this analysis might not be ironclad, he acknowledged.

Other studies have painted a more dour version of Idaho. The state ranked sixth in the nation for suicides in 2010, according to the Suicide Prevention Action Network of Idaho.

And Idaho did not make the top 10 list of the Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index in 2011, assessing U.S. residents' health and well being (Hawaii, however, was ranked number one in both the Twitter and Gallup studies).

The Twitter research also gauged a mere sliver of Idaho residents, Unis noted.

Only 15 percent of adults online use Twitter, he said. And most are ages 18 to 29, "the happiest you're ever going to be in your life," he added.

"Whenever you get into populations as sparse as Idaho, the misinterpretation is going to be greater," said Unis, who thinks high suicide rates persist here because of limited access to mental health professionals.

That said, most Idahoans Unis meets are "pretty optimistic people," he said.

"They're very self sufficient. Their expectations are more realistic about what one can get out of life," he said.

Unis can pinpoint plenty of reasons for people to feel content here, too.

"A lot of people who live in Idaho really take advantage of the spectacular resources that are available," he said, listing off skiing, fishing, golfing. "Those kinds of natural resources aren't sheltered or sequestered away for a narrow portion of the population. They're available and taken advantage by everyone in Idaho."

Word on the street, not the tweet

Non-tweeted opinions agree the Gem State stokes good cheer.

People are just accommodating here, Coeur d'Alene Realtor Loretta Hartman said.

"When I ask people who move in here, what they like about the area, they say 'the people are so friendly,'" said Hartman, who personally appreciates that no one honks at her in traffic. "People aren't rude."

Bob Sundquist, mixed martial arts athlete and senior pastor at Christ the King Lutheran Church, believes he knows why people here are so buoyant.

"The things that make people happy here is they value three things: Faith, family and fun," Sundquist said.

The myriad congregations in the area connects people to others and involves them in positive pursuits, he said.

Members of his church, for instance, volunteer for nonprofits like Family Promise, the local food bank and St. Vincent de Paul.

"Faith changes how we move around in the community," he said.

Another factor of our effervescence: North Idaho's high fitness level, he added.

So many here invest hours in biking, running and swimming as they train for the Coeur d'Alene Ironman, Sundquist said, including his associate pastor Dan Weber.

Sundquist himself is heavily involved with the AKA mixed martial arts studio.

Being active gives people a healthier outlook, he said. Maybe the dopamine rush?

"It's hard to describe. They're just happier," he said of the athletic tribe.

Fussing over a smart phone in Calypso's, friends Travis Wolf and Coral Caraway waxed support that Idahoans are happier.

Wolf has witnessed affable people statewide, since he moved from Boise to the Post Falls area two years ago.

"I'd say just the outdoors (makes people happy). There's a lot to do, especially in the north," Wolf said, adding that he Facebooks but doesn't tweet about his good times.

In Boise and Coeur d'Alene alike, strangers will throw Wolf a smile and a greeting, he added.

People even pick up something he drops.

"Just sitting here, some guy just walked up to say hey," he said.

Cloudy attitude

Idaho doesn't have everyone smiling.

Courtney Gorman and her father Pat, both Coeur d'Alene natives, diverge on quality of life here.

"My email is I-love-Cda@hotmail.com. I mean it. I love this place," said Pat as the pair strolled downtown. "Every season there is something. In the summer, the lake. In the winter, the mountains. In the fall, downtown."

Courtney was not as enthused.

After living in California and Colorado, Courtney found Idaho a tad depressing to return to, she said.

"It's a little harder here, mainly because it's so cloudy," Courtney said. "If think if you're used to clouds, people like it. But if you've been to Denver or San Diego, it's sunny 300 days of the year."

North Idaho weather sours her outlook, she added.

"Sitting at the coffee shop today, I said, 'Dad, I'm just not happy today,'" Courtney said.

But it's attitudes like that that Hanks tries to improve.

With her tweeting.

"I think just having that connection with other people I wouldn't have otherwise," she said of Twitter's benefits. "I've heard people say you can kind of become sucked into something that isn't real, but I do talk to real people. I think it's an encouraging thing."