Haha, hardly anyone says LOL on Facebook anymore

The majority of people who want to express on Facebook that they think something is funny uses the expression ‘haha’. In less than 2 percent of cases, people on Facebook say “LOL” to show that they have something to laugh about.

‘Haha’ also includes variants such as ‘hahaha’ and ‘hahahaha’, say the researchers at Facebook Research, the research arm of the social network. The dataset was all posts and comments on Facebook in the last week of May. Because the research came from Facebook, they also had access to posts and comments that users would normally not see.

In one in three cases, people used an emoji to express that they saw the humor in something. “Hehe” was also common. The users of LOL are not only less numerous, but also older on average than those of ‘haha’ or an emoji.

The researchers have limited themselves to English-language expressions and emojis that are common in English-speaking countries, so the situation may differ elsewhere. How many people in the study actually laughed and how many people didn’t mean it or meant the expression of humor ironically or sarcastic is unknown.