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This year social networking topped the list, followed by Twitter, alcohol, chocolate, and swearing. It was a fairly typical year, with the top five the same as last year (though in a different order)–except for swearing, which came in at #6 last year, behind chips. (Chips had received a boost last year from Theresa May’s vow to give them up; this year they returned to closer to their usual spot.)

This year, 29,609 tweets (excluding retweets) specifically mention giving up something, down substantially from last year’s 73,334. In all, this year the analysis covers 427,810 tweets, down from 694,244 last year.

Relationships

As expected with Valentine’s Day falling on Ash Wednesday this year, relationship-related tweets increased:

Plastic

Plastic also jumped substantially this year, boosted by the Church of England’s suggestion that followers give up various forms of plastic for Lent.

Fortnite

New to the list this year is Fortnite, a Hunger Games-style video game:

“It’s all they talk about,” said Glen Irvin, a teacher coach at a high school in Sauk Rapids, Minn., of “Fortnite”-playing students. “The only other game I’ve ever heard kids get this passionate about is ‘Minecraft.’”

Juuling

Also new this year is juuling, a slick and covert way to vape:

Resembling a flash drive, Juul conveys a sense of industry — you’re Juuling into your MacBook Air while you are cramming for your test on Theodore Dreiser and thinking about trigonometry — and it is so easy to conceal that, as one mother explained to me, she failed to notice that her daughter was vaping in the back seat of the car as she was driving.

Giving up juuling this year was nearly half as popular as giving up smoking:

Shootings

Two newcomers to the list this year are #30, guns, and #88, mass shootings. These tweets reflected a shooting at a Florida high school on Ash Wednesday.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump fell this year from #22 to #67, sandwiched between hope and procrastination.

Tide Pods

Finishing just out of the top 100 this year are Tide Pods, which people keep eating for some reason.

Fast Food

Chick-fil-A surged to near-parity with McDonald’s, while Chipotle this week decided to deal with its Taco Bell parity by hiring Taco Bell’s former CEO.

Snack Food

Have Hot Cheetos finally plateaued?

Emojis

This year 4,667 tweets (16%) contained at least one emoji, down from 19% last year. The most-popular emojis were: 😂 😭 ♀ 😩 🙃 🙏 ✌ 😅 🙄 ♂.

Retweets

Here’s the most-retweeted Lent post this year, with over 71,000 retweets. I’m not totally sure why. (All the rest of the data on this page excludes retweets.)

for lent im just giving up

— annie (@annien826) February 13, 2018

Top 100 Things Twitterers Gave Up for Lent in 2018

Rank	Word	Count	Change from last year’s rank
1.	Social networking	1,329	+1
2.	Twitter	1,215	+2
3.	Alcohol	1,105	-2
4.	Chocolate	1,035	-1
5.	Swearing	549	+1
6.	Meat	531	+6
7.	Sweets	499	+3
8.	Soda	441	0
9.	Coffee	387	+2
10.	Fast food	380	-1
11.	Lent	373	+2
12.	Facebook	342	+9
13.	Sex	315	+6
14.	Bread	267	+2
15.	School	256	-8
16.	Chips	222	-11
17.	Snapchat	216	+34
18.	Beer	193	-3
19.	You	189	+1
20.	Men	189	+35
21.	Plastic	188	+122
22.	Sugar	185	-5
23.	Boys	165	+2
24.	Candy	162	+7
25.	Valentine’s Day	157	+130
26.	Work	145	-2
27.	College	145	-13
28.	Negativity	144	+32
29.	Instagram	143	+13
30.	Guns	141	+126
31.	Life	139	-13
32.	Marijuana	132	+1
33.	Junk food	130	-6
34.	Religion	130	-8
35.	Giving up things	112
36.	Starbucks	111	-2
37.	Red meat	108	+12
38.	Cheese	106	-6
39.	Catholicism	105	-4
40.	Pizza	104	-11
41.	Smoking	100	-11
42.	Love	100	+96
43.	Wine	93	-3
44.	Carbs	91	0
45.	Me	89	-7
46.	Fortnite	87
47.	Lying	84	+25
48.	Dairy	81	+13
49.	Homework	78	-21
50.	Rice	77	-7
51.	Booze	76	+12
52.	Fried food	75	-7
53.	Ice cream	74	-17
54.	Complaining	72	+14
55.	Cookies	69	-18
56.	Single use plastic	68	+100
57.	Shopping	68	-11
58.	People	66	-11
59.	Caffeine	65	+11
60.	Stuff	60	-10
61.	Masturbation	59	+3
62.	Liquor	58	-5
63.	F***boys	58	-24
64.	Takeout	57	-4
65.	Sobriety	57	-9
66.	Hope	57	-43
67.	Donald Trump	56	-46
68.	Procrastination	56	-13
69.	Virginity	55	-21
70.	McDonald’s	55	-8
71.	Hot Cheetos	55	-5
72.	French fries	53	-20
73.	Netflix	53	-8
74.	Fizzy drinks	49	+3
75.	Chick Fil A	48	+4
76.	Eating out	48	-10
77.	Makeup	47	-32
78.	Porn	47	+21
79.	Myself	45	-3
80.	Juuling	45
81.	Him	44	-7
82.	Pasta	44	-3
83.	Desserts	41	-14
84.	Food	40	-25
85.	Coke	40	-14
86.	Pork	39	+17
87.	Dating	38	+23
88.	Mass shootings	38
89.	Sleep	38	-16
90.	Breathing	37	-47
91.	Boba	37	+3
92.	Being single	36	+22
93.	Cake	36	-6
94.	My will to live	36	-36
95.	Pancakes	36	-15
96.	The presidency	35	-43
97.	Online shopping	32	-15
98.	Tea	31	+10
99.	Brexit	30	+27
100.	This	30	-5
101.	TV	30	-5

Top Categories

Unlike previous years, no non-political celebrities inspired large numbers of people to give them up.

Rank	Category	Number of Tweets
1.	food	6,702
2.	technology	3,556
3.	habits	2,034
4.	smoking/drugs/alcohol	2,027
5.	relationship	1,339
6.	irony	946
7.	school/work	714
8.	sex	568
9.	religion	404
10.	politics	252
11.	generic	224
12.	possessions	155
13.	entertainment	149
14.	shopping	147
15.	health/hygiene	125
16.	money	94
17.	sports	53
18.	weather	21
19.	clothes	14

Media Coverage

The Lent Tracker received some media attention this year:

• Christianity Today
• Quartz
• MarketWatch
• Visalia Times-Delta
• WVOC New Orleans
• Newsweek
• The Sun

See the top 100 things people are giving up for Lent in 2018 on Twitter, continually updated until February 17, 2018. You can also use the Historical Lent Tracker to see trends since 2009, though 2018 is still in flux, so I wouldn’t draw any conclusions about 2018 yet.

As I write this post, with about 1,500 tweets analyzed, perennial favorites “social networking,” “alcohol,” and “twitter” lead the list. Ash Wednesday coincides with Valentine’s Day this year (and thus Easter with April Fools’ Day), so I expect relationship-related tweets to run higher than usual.

Look for the usual post-mortem on February 18, 2018.