Which states have the most foul-mouthed social media users?
(NEXSTAR) – It might be time to wash our mouths out with soap, America.
A recent analysis from Word Tips — an online Scrabble resource — has suggested that U.S.-based social-media users on X (formerly Twitter) use curse words more than those of any other country they studied, with about 41.6 foul-mouthed tweets per every 1,000.
In coming to their findings, the analysts at Word Tips studied a sample of 1.7 million geotagged tweets for any of 1,600 English-language profanities — but they only looked at tweets written in the English language. For this reason, it’s likely that tweets sent from English-speaking countries contained more four-letter words simply because users were more familiar with the terms and their usage.
Still, X users in the U.S. used swear words significantly more often than those in other English-speaking countries including the U.K. (28.6 per 1,000 tweets), Australia (26.6 per 1,000), New Zealand (25.2) and Canada (24.6).
But where in the U.S. are the most foul-mouthed tweets coming from?
That would be Maryland — although the folks in Baltimore appear to be doing the heavy lifting.
According to the data analyzed by Word Tips, social media users in Maryland used swear words in 66.3 tweets for every 1,000, while tweets from Baltimore alone used dirty language in 78.2 for every 1,000.
Louisiana and Georgia were the states with the highest percentages of geotagged tweets containing explicit language after Maryland, at 61.7 and 57.4 foul tweets for every thousand, respectively. When it comes to cities, the data accordingly showed Baton Rouge and Atlanta (72.9 and 66.7 per thousand) right behind Baltimore for the most geotagged profane tweets.
The top 10 for both the state and city categories, as determined by Word Tips, are below:
States
- Maryland (66.3 tweets per 1,000 containing profanity)
- Louisiana (61.7)
- Georgia (57.4)
- Virginia (47.6)
- Ohio (47.3)
- Mississippi (45.9)
- Pennsylvania (45.7)
- Nevada (45.5)
- New Jersey (45.5)
- Michigan (45.3)
Cities
- Baltimore, Maryland (78.2)
- Baton Rouge, Louisiana (72.9)
- Atlanta, Georgia (66.7)
- Detroit, Michigan (66.0)
- Houston, Texas (63.2)
- Cleveland, Ohio (62.6)
- Oakland, California (61.3)
- New Orleans, Louisiana (60.3)
- Long Beach, California (60.1)
- Memphis, Tennessee (57.6)
On its site, Word Tips also used the data to determine the “most foul-mouthed city” in each state, for anyone curious to learn where people are tweeting obscenities in their own neck of the woods.
More information, including a list of the country’s least-sweary states and details of the methodology, can be found at the official Word Tips website.