American's are trying to eliminate 'like' and 'um' from the lexicon

Americans are, like, so totally over how we speak — but can we actually stop using them?

Filler words have become so common in everyday conversation that most of us hardly notice them — until someone points them out.

But according to a new study by Preply , a global online language learning platform, Americans are getting increasingly self-conscious about their speech habits, as Google searches for “filler words” have shot up 144% in the last month.

This insecurity has even turned into a viral online trend. With the “no filler words trend, ” Americans are challenging one another to record themselves speaking for 30 seconds to a minute without using those dreaded words.

But filler words aren’t new.

Linguists trace their popularity back to the mid-20th century, when spontaneous conv