Just as many women wear their emotions on their sleeves, they’re also leaving their emoticons on their social media posts.

USA Today reports that a recent study finds women ages 40 and older are taking on the conversational style  in social media favored by young women and teen boys, using “highly expressive language, emoticons and other emotional cues.”

“In general, a young woman's social media style tends to emphasize emotion, playfulness and humor, which are all recognized in other contexts as projecting connection,” Ruth Page, the study’s leader and author of Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction, tells the newspaper.

Just don’t expect the men in your life to start using swirly fonts or adding smiley faces to their status updates—these are female-only traits, according to USA Today. Whatever. We’ll keep on emoticon-ing our little <3’s out. How ’bout you? ;-)

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