Kids Curse, Oldsters Ramble: Facebook Study

You can learn a lot when you’re listening to 550 million people. Using linguistic software, Facebook analysts investigated what people were saying in status updates, and came up with a number of interesting trends, Business Insider reports:

• The oldsters chatter quite a bit: Status update length was the best way to predict age. Older people also tend to talk more about religion and family.

• The young, meanwhile, leave out articles and prepositions, tend to curse more, and use the word “I” frequently.
• Those who use “you” a lot tend to have more friends.
• People have positive outlooks in the morning, the time of more upbeat statuses. After 10pm, there’s a negativity surge.
• Negative status updates garner more comments than positive ones.
• Friends use similar vocabularies, especially when discussing family and religion or using swear words.

(More Facebook stories.)