Nearly one in five Americans observed Lent last year, and more than half a million tweeted about their fast.
Each year, Stephen Smith of OpenBible.info tracks hundreds of thousands of Lenten tweets during the week of Ash Wednesday. “As I write this post, with about 4,000 tweets analyzed, perennial favorites ”˜alcohol,’ ”˜chocolate,’ and ”˜social networking’ lead the list,” he wrote in his Monday debut of the 2015 list. “Given winter weather conditions in the eastern U.S., I expect that snow- and winter-related tweets will be popular this year.”
Food and technology were the most popular categories that roughly 646,000 tweeting Americans reported giving up in 2014. The top five choices: School, chocolate, Twitter, swearing, and alcohol””ideas consistently popular for Christians since Smith began using Twitter’s API to track Lent in 2009.