The widely held belief that men hardly use 7,000 words a day, while women use over 20,000, may be familiar to you. It may seem like a fun fact, but according to scientists, it’s more myth than reality.
The 2006 book The Female Brain introduced this viral concept, which quickly acquired popularity. However, when researchers chose to test it, the findings were rather different. The amount of time that men and women spend speaking in a day was measured using real-world recordings in a 2007 study conducted by the University of Arizona and the University of Texas. The remedy? The change is minimal.
On average, women use 16,215 words each day, according to the study. We’ve all been told that there is a 13,000-word difference, yet that is actually less than 600 words.
These findings were supported more recently by a worldwide survey conducted in 2025. It examined over 2,000 individuals between the ages of 10 and 94 and discovered that while women between the ages of 25 and 64 do talk a little more—roughly 3,000 extra words—the difference narrows considerably beyond that age range.
Although women may talk a little more than males at some points in their lives, the notion that they “talk too much” is unfounded. Everybody communicates differently, and personality traits, occupation, age, and other variables frequently have a greater impact than gender.
You have the information to correct the record the next time someone uses the “20,000 vs. 7,000” line.
