Experiments / Right now, around the world / Crying

Live world view — crying

How many people are crying, right now?

— people

Low confidence — based on self-report surveys, not registries — see how we calculate this

That's approximately — of the roughly 8.3 billion people alive today — or about —.

Updating live · — UTC

30–64/yearWomen's average crying frequency (37-country study)
5–17/yearMen's average crying frequency, same study
Peaks ~6 wksInfant crying peaks around 6 weeks old, then declines
Culture-dependentGender gap wider in more expressive cultures (Chile, Sweden, US)

Unlike births or deaths, there's no agreed-upon global crying rate — these figures come from real, peer-reviewed self-report surveys (the International Study on Adult Crying, 37 countries, 7,000+ people), not a registry count. That's a meaningfully different — and more limited — kind of evidence, and we're labeling it as such.

Palette

Countries plotted by longitude, latitude and population. Intensity is an illustrative model, deliberately capped low, based on self-report survey data rather than a registry count — see methodology below.

00:00 UTC

Hover or tap a country for its local time and estimate.

An honest starting point: this isn't a registry number

Unlike births, deaths, or tobacco use, no institution tracks crying the way the UN tracks births or the WHO tracks smoking. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to work with — real, peer-reviewed cross-cultural research exists here, more than for some other soft topics on this site. The live figure above is deliberately capped low and modeled as a rare, mostly nighttime event, drawing loosely on self-report survey averages rather than any kind of census.

37

countries surveyed in the International Study on Adult Crying

7,000+

people surveyed across those countries

2–5x

how much more often women report crying than men, consistently across cultures

How we estimate this

The live share is modeled as a low-probability event with a mild late-night peak, scaled against UN population estimates. We're capping this model well below what the map's color scale would suggest for other pages, specifically to avoid implying a precision we don't have. The real substance on this page is the research below, not the live number above it.

The International Study on Adult Crying

The best cross-cultural evidence on crying frequency comes from a long-running research program led by psychologist Ad Vingerhoets at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Surveying more than 7,000 adults across 37 countries, the research consistently found that women report crying noticeably more often than men — estimates range from about 30 to 64 times a year for women, compared to roughly 5 to 17 times a year for men, according to reporting in the American Psychological Association's own Monitor magazine. A separate, more recent field study using daily self-reports over a month found women crying about 5.8 times in that period versus 2.6 times for men — a smaller absolute number than the annual estimates, but the same roughly two-to-one gender ratio.

Why the gender gap varies so much by country

The size of the gap between men's and women's crying isn't fixed — it moves with culture. Research on the same international dataset found the gender gap in crying was more pronounced in countries with greater freedom of emotional expression and stronger social safety nets, such as Chile, Sweden, and the United States. In countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and Nepal, the difference between men's and women's reported crying was much smaller. Separately, crying frequency among women (though not men) correlated positively with a country's GDP per capita — wealthier countries reported more frequent crying among women, not less, which runs against a common assumption that hardship produces more tears.

Crying starts long before any of this research applies

Infants cry far more than adults, and the pattern has its own well-documented shape. A meta-analysis covering nearly 8,700 infants worldwide found that crying duration increases after birth, peaks around 6 weeks of age, and then declines — dropping to about 68 minutes a day by 12 weeks. That study also found real cross-country variation: babies in the UK, Canada, and Italy cried the most on average, while babies in Denmark, Germany, and Japan cried the least, a difference researchers link to parenting practices and cultural expectations around infant soothing as much as to biology.

Frequently asked questions

How often do people cry?

A 37-country study of over 7,000 people found women report crying 30 to 64 times a year on average, compared to 5 to 17 times a year for men.

Why do women cry more than men?

Both biology (hormones like prolactin) and culture play a role — the gender gap is wider in more emotionally expressive countries like Chile, Sweden, and the US, and narrower elsewhere.

Do babies cry more than adults?

Yes, substantially. A meta-analysis of nearly 8,700 infants found crying peaks around 6 weeks old before declining to about 68 minutes a day by 12 weeks.

Is there a reliable global crying rate?

No single agreed rate exists the way it does for births or deaths — these figures come from self-report surveys, a real but more limited kind of evidence than a registry count.

Sources