A newly published study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center takes a look at the different words used by various demographics of Facebook users. Unsurprisingly and perhaps stereotypically, women talked the most about shopping and doing their hair while men posted about video games, sports and war.
Elsewhere, researchers found that women tend to use more emotional words like "excited" and spoke about love more often. Guys, on the other hand, were possessive and used the term "my" when discussing their girlfriend or wife. Conversely, women used words like "amazing" or "her" when talking about their significant other. Men also tended to swear more often and speak of objects like "Xbox."
Perhaps the more interesting takeaway is the usage of words by age groups. The study found that teens between the age of 13 to 18 often mentioned things like school and homework while those a bit older (19-22) were chatting about apartments, campus life and having sex.
It gets even more predictable as the age ranges increase. Those between the age of 23 and 29 spoke most often about work, bills, home life and drinking while individuals aged 30 to 65 were more focused on family.
The researchers combed through more than 700 million words and phrases from status updates collected from a pool of 75,000 volunteers. It's all part of a larger project known as the World Well-Being Project which seeks to create techniques for measuring psychological and physical well-being based on language in social media.