EMOJI USERS HAVE MORE SEX? I CALL it BULLSHIT

That went viral on Facebook last week. At least, without the bullshit part. That comes from me.

It all started with a ‘study’ from the American dating site match.com, which, like every year, conducted a large survey among its members. What turns out is that people who use more emojis in text messages have a more active sex life. And then the numbers. According to Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist at Rutgers University, 54% of emoji users had sex in 2014, compared to 31% of singles who did not use emojis. Moreover, it turned out that the more emojis were used, the more sex there was. The theory, according to match.com, applies to men and women between the ages of 20 and 40. Finally, 62% of emoji users would like to get married, while among non-users this is only 30%.

First of all, I always have to sigh heavily at those tasty clickbait studies. Those news items that do well on the internet and radio, but whose scientific basis is still very questionable. “But there is a real biological anthropologist and so on!” Yes, that's true, but a quick Google search shows that Ms. Fisher has been employed by Match.com since 2005, so her independence is still very much in question.

Then, do you really think there is a causal relationship between fucking emojis and the amount of sex you have?? And that if you start using a lot of emojis now, you'll suddenly have more sex? Come on people, be smarter than that. To begin with, it seems to me that people who use a lot of emojis are generally younger, and younger people use emojis more often than older people. Then the headline is “young people use more emojis than older people”, but that doesn't quite do as well on social media, does it?

Then there are undoubtedly a thousand other connections to be found. People who walk more have more sex, people who are alone longer have less sex, or rather more, it all just depends on how you look at the data. It reminds me a bit of a study from some time ago, conducted by Harley Davidson, which ‘showed’ that female motorcyclists would have a better sex life, I wrote this about it at the time, titled “shitty research”.

And this emoji story is the same. Really. We all do well to not just go by headlines and use a bit more of our common sense. Look, it could be true, but not based on this research. So, want more sex? You should just jump on top of your guy or find a nice specimen in the pub. But just leave those emojis alone.