Dave Johnson@davejohndc July 8, 2014
Justin Bieber may have celebrated his 20th birthday this spring but on Twitter, he isn’t smarter than a fifth grader. The rebellious Canadian pop star shouldn’t be embarrassed: Lady Gaga is also tweeting at fifth grade level, while President Barack Obama doesn’t score much higher: he tweets like a seventh grader.
According to TIME’s analysis of 1 million public tweets, 33 percent of tweets test at a fourth grade reading level. The test relied upon a commonly used reading comprehension survey known as SMOG, or Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (really), to assess the complexity of messages sent on the social network. “Gobbledygook” is defined as a word of three or more syllables.
Who uses the most gobbledygook? You guessed it: politicians. Search for lawmakers like@NancyPelosi and@SpeakerBoehner to see how they measure up, or use the tool to find the smartest and dumbest tweets of any public twitter account.
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