How do you laugh online? “Lol” drops in popularity

haha facebook

Facebook recently analyzed posts and comments posted on Facebook in the last week of May to measure how we communicate laughter with our friends online.

Are you a lol-er or are you a haha-er? Perhaps you’re one of those that like to string a few together, which would make you a hahaha-er.

The data unveiled that laughter was quite common in posts: 15% of people included laughter in a post or comment that week. 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

As the pie chart shows, the vast majority of people in Facebook’s dataset are haha-ers (51.4%), then there are the emoji lovers (33.7%), the hehe-ers (12.7%), and finally, the lol-ers (1.9%).

Has and Hes are like building blocks, with the most common version using 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.. The lol almost always stands by itself, though some rare specimens of lolz and loll were found.

Clearly if you’re still using lol, you’re part of a minority as hahas and hehes are the most popular ways to laugh online.

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