Facebook observed data for one week on wall posts and comments, and they recently shared a fascinating study about how age, gender and geography play into how we use laughter online.
The data revealed that most people ages 13 to 70 are using “haha” or longer variations thereof (51 percent), followed by emojis (33.7 percent). Less common were “hehe” (13.1 percent) and “lol” at only 1.9 percent.
This was a global study, but it focused largely on English language use and emojis.
If you waste time online sharing or commenting on funnies, you are not alone. Fifteen percent of people who posted or commented during that week posted at least one variation of e-laughing, and 85 percent of those posted up to four instances.
Women and young people are far more likely to use emojis, while men prefer “haha” and longer versions of “hehe” over women.
As for lengthening versions of the above, “haha”ers use longer laughter. The “lol” is rarely lengthened to “lolz” or similar, and a single emoji is used 50 percent of the time.
Geography plays an interesting role as well. “Haha” and “hehe” are more popular on the west coast, while emojis rule the midwest, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. “Lol” is more popular among southern states and California. In the below graphic from Facebook, the darker the green color, the more popular the form of e-laughter.
How might marketers or other organizations use this data? Well, let’s just say if political campaigns, for example, are hip to employ the most popular forms of e-laughter to win over battleground states or particular demographics, they would be well-advised to avoid emoji contests like Hillary Clinton’s failed Twitter campaign about student loan debt earlier this week. With over 700 different emojis available, the possibilities for backfired humor in the form of such a contest are just too rich.
While interesting to know the trends, what about the use of “haw,” “tee hee,” “giggidy,” “hardy har har” or other creative variants for e-laughter that didn’t even register on the study? Most all of the examples I could list here have come from people from my home state of Mississippi and surrounding areas … which leads me to wonder if such twists are simply a side effect of the storytelling culture that is so pervasive in the South?
If e-laughing is e-volving, what do you and your network of friends currently prefer and why?
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