How Do You Laugh Online? According to Facebook, 'Haha' Is The Most Popular E-Laughter
Are you a haha-er or hehe-er?
By John Lim — 12 Aug 2015, 01:33 PM
As the saying goes, laughter is the best medicine. According to research, laughing regularly has its health benefits that range from boosting immune system to lower blood sugar level
Everyone laughs differently in real life, though, so it would follow that the same applies to the expression of laughter in text, that's what a recent study by Facebook found
According to a post by the Facebook research team, the social media giant has been monitoring how people have been 'laughing' online
Based on the study, the most common expression of e-laughter is haha, followed by emoji and hehe, with lol coming in last
The most common laugh is haha, followed by various emoji and hehe. Age, gender and geographic location play a role in laughter type and length: young people and women prefer emoji, whereas men prefer longer hehes. People in Chicago and New York prefer emoji, while Seattle and San Francisco prefer hahas.
facebook.com
This plot shows that the median person (the dashed line) that uses emoji is slightly younger than the median haha person, but both of these are younger than the people using hehes and lols!
facebook.com
The study was limited to only Facebook comments, excluding conversations in Facebook Messenger - and only English laughter and emoji were examined although the study was conducted around the world
In addition, the research team analyzed each common e-laughter, inferring that haha-ers are most likely to elongate the expression longer than hehe-ers
The most common are the four letter hahas and hehes. The six letter hahaha is also very common, and in general, the hahaers use longer laughter. The hahaers are also slightly more open than the hehe-ers to using odd number of letters, and we do see the occasional hahaas and hhhhaaahhhaas. The lol almost always stands by itself, though some rare specimens of lolz and loll were found.
facebook.com