"I was like, 'Oh my God!'"

A recent reading assignment described a study done to compare the verb be like in the U.K and the U.S. and people's attitudes toward the users of this verb. Previous studies showed that Americans generally associated be like with younger speakers, specifically females. I generally hold this same belief, but I don't think the trend is as drastic as people think it is. Females may use the verb more frequently as a quotation device than males do, but not to an extreme degree more. Well, maybe valley girls do, but how many of us are true valley girls? I hope I don't sound like one, at least! This is an example of how the information that study gathers about a population's attitudes cannot be taken as data on how the population actually speaks; they might be very different from each other.