As society becomes more progressive, gender roles are breaking down. We no longer bat an eye at male nurses or female bodybuilders, but the topics we talk about on Facebook eerily follow old-school gender stereotypes. Check out the graphic below for proof:
The data comes from a recent study that analyzed status updates from more than 50,000 Facebook users between 2007 and 2012. A fancy algorithm grouped the most popular terms, and we took the liberty of giving each topic an all-encompassing name. So “happy, birthday, wishing, sister, years, wonderful, daughter, nephew, brother” became “birthdays” and “metal, music, band, rock, heavy, listening, singer, songs” became “music.”
Overall men are far more likely to talk about objects and events like sports or video games, whereas women write status updates about plans and relationships. The study also found that women are more likely to use emotional language, but both men and women show a similar level of assertiveness.
