50% prefer 'haha' while 1.9% use 'LOL': Facebook study on e-laughter

The study found that 51.4% of people are haha-ers, 33.7% are emoji lovers, 12.7% are hehe-ers and a mere 1.9% are lol-ers

It started with a New Yorker article by Sarah Larson, who analysed the variants of e-laughter – haha, hehe and lol. Taking off from this was a Facebook study conducted in the last week of May which found that 51.4% of people are haha-ers, 33.7% are emoji lovers, 12.7% are hehe-ers and a mere 1.9% are lol-ers. It found that laughter differed across age, gender and geographical location.
 

Image courtesy Facebook

While Larson relied on anecdotes, Facebook analysed real data. “We analysed de-identified posts and comments posted on Facebook in the last week of May with at least one string of characters matching laughter. We did the matching with regular expressions which automatically identified laughter in the text, including variants of haha, hehe, emoji, and lol,” Facebook said in a post.
 

Image courtesy Facebook

While most young people (below 20 years) used emojis more, haha and hehe were used by slightly older people (20 years and above). Lol was used by older people (between 25 years and 30 years of age).
 

Image courtesy Facebook

Most men and women used emojis and haha more, followed by hehe and lol, the least. 

Besides these differences, the study found that the four letter haha and hehe and the six letter hahaha and hehehe are very common. Haha-ers are more likely to use an odd number of letters than hehe-ers and there are the occasional hahaas and hhhhaaahhhaas. Lol is usually all by itself with an occasional lolz and loll. "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?" said the Facebook post. 

So, are you a haha-er, hehe-er or a lol-er?