As far as cleaning goes, men seem to complain on social media more than women — study

MANILA—When it comes to cleaning, men apparently complain on social media more than women do, a study showed.

According to research by Cleanipedia, an online resource startup by consumer goods giant Unilever, 67% of tweets globally complaining about cleaning came from men, while women accounted for 33%.

"Data is based on the proportion of tweets related to cleaning that we classified as stressed using a sentiment analysis tool. We used a gender classifier tool to categorize Twitter users as either male or female depending on their first name," Cleanipedia said.

The startup said it analyzed 800,000 tweets in the Philippines last August alone to reveal the "most stressful tidying tasks and where people complain about them the most" in the country. 

Among member-countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Philippines ranked 6th among countries that found cleaning "most stressful," based on tweets, according to Cleanipedia. Mexico ranked first. 

Meanwhile, more than a third (38.3%) of tweets from people in Capiz province that posted about cleaning were classified as stressed, the study showed.

"That’s a higher proportion than any other province in the country," Cleanipedia said.
 
Capiz was followed by Pangasinan (37.4%), Lanao del Sur (37.3%), Tarlac (36.9%), Cebu (36.3), Maguindanao (35.4%), Agusan del Sur (35.0%), Negros Oriental (34.6%), Benguet (34.6%) and Metro Manila (34.5%). 

"Data is based on the proportion of geotagged tweets related to cleaning that we classified as stressed using a sentiment analysis tool," the startup said.

According to Cleanipedia, the most stressful task is dusting, "with nearly one in three (32.1%) of the dusting-related tweets we found classifying as stressed."

"Sweeping (30.4%) is the next most stressful cleaning task according to the tweets we analyzed," it added.

"Data is based on the proportion of cleaning-related tweets featuring task keywords that we classified as stressed using a sentiment analysis tool."

The study also showed that 37.4% of cleaning-related tweets were about the stresses of cleaning bedrooms. 

"Cleaning a bathroom (31%) was the next most stressful task, according to the tweets in our analysis," Cleanipedia added.

According to the startup, it analyzed the cleaning-related tweets with TensiStrength, a system that detects levels of stress and relaxation expressed in social media text messages based on the tool's classification of words.

"Tweets were classified as stressed using the following numerical scale: -1: no stress, -2: low stress, -3 moderate stress, -4: high stress, -5: very high stress. Any tweet in our analysis scoring -2 or below was classified as stressed. Using a tweet's geotag as an indicator of where the Twitter user was based, we could then find the most stressed cities and countries in the world," it explained.

Regina Ocampo from Cleanipedia noted an untidy living space can be bad for mental health.

"It’s hard not to feel stressed when tackling a huge and almost overwhelming mess. If you live with other people, make sure you don’t carry the burden of tidying the whole house yourself. Everyone needs to be on board and get stuck in when it comes to cleaning," Ocampo said.

"If you’re faced with a very untidy house, take one room at a time, make it fun for yourself by playing your favorite music or a TV show in the background, and take breaks when you need to."

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