Walk through the hallway. Pause for a moment and listen to the number of profane words and slurs casually spoken. The use of conversational swearing can achieve many outcomes, from joking or storytelling to a substitute for physical aggression, still profanity is more prevalent than ever among teens.

Research shows that an average adolescent swears about 80 to 90 times a day. Timothy Jay, a psychology professor at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, suggests that the rise in profanity isn’t the result of taboo words in television shows, advertising, professional sports, radio, music, or film, but in fact parenting. Approximately two-thirds of parents encourage their children to minimize profanity use. However, they often break their own rule on a regular basis. This can lead to a situation where kids take after what parents do rather than what they say.

According to Psych Central, traditionally, people swear the most during their teenage years, yet over the past few decades children have started swearing more at a younger age. In fact, by the time children enter lower school they have an established list of 30-40 swear words in their vocabulary. It has become a common speech pattern in both adults and teenagers making up about 0.3 to 0.7%  of words spoken daily according to Jay. The most common swear word, according to Business Insider, is the F-word. Nowadays, the ‘f-bomb’ is dropped so much it has lost it’s shock.

Although among the scientific community there is much debate over whether swearing is cathartic, the aggressive connotations of swearing may make it seem like someone who curses excessively is not a pleasant person. People who swear a lot are assumed to have a lack of vocabulary, and to many people swearing is rude, unpleasant, and irritating. So even if swearing doesn’t bother some people take the safe side and curb the urge to swear. As written in Health Guidance, “swearing becomes habitual and almost instinctive like a knee jerk reaction.”  Even though, the ‘swear jar’ is considered a cliché way to prevent swearing, academic journals have proven that it can actually help.

Whatever it takes to fix this epidemic, swearing has become too common in our vocabulary and needs to stop.  A walk down the hall should be f-bomb free.