The "LOL" expression for "laughing out loud" is apparently losing significant ground to other expressions such as the simpler "haha."
Laughter plays a big part of our lives and we express it online as well, as a reflection of our mood, reaction or attitude towards something. While back in the day more people may have used "LOL" to reflect great amusement, the expression is no longer as popular among users who communicate online.
Facebook, one of the largest social networks currently dominating the scene, has carried out a new study and found that only 1.9 percent of people still use "LOL" to express their amusement. Most users, i.e. 51 percent, prefer to express their laughter on Facebook with a simpler "haha," emoji, "hehe," or variations of "haha" and "hehe."
Facebook's study comes in response to a recent article written by Sarah Larson, published a few weeks ago in The New Yorker. The article tackles the various types of virtual laughter, their preponderance and their subtleties, and Facebook dives deeper to offer a more precise breakdown of the patterns.
According to the study Facebook conducted, "haha" is the most commonly used laugh, while various laughing emoji and "hehe" are next in line, dethroning the infamous "LOL."
The social network further points out that various factors may influence the type of laughter, as well as the length. Such factors include gender, age and geographic location.
Young users and women, for instance, apparently prefer emoji, while men are reportedly more prone to longer "hehes." At the same time, Facebook notes that users in New York and Chicago prefer to express their laughter through emoji, while those in San Francisco and Seattle use more "hahas."
Facebook analyzed posts and comments from one week, and found that roughly 15 percent of people used at least one "e-laugh" during that time. The social network even went on to illustrate "the distribution of the number of laughs." During the week, roughly 46 percent of users posted just a single launch, while 85 percent posted up to five laughs. When it comes to the different types of laughs users posted, 52 percent of people apparently used just one type, while 20 percent used two different types.
Additionally, Facebook also looked at the forms in which these types of laughter appear online.
"The lol almost always stands by itself, though some rare specimens of lolz and loll were found," the social network points out. "A single emoji is used 50% of the time, and it's quite rare to see people use more than 5 identical consecutive emoji. Perhaps emoji offer a concise way to convey various forms of laughter?"
