Why we are saying “uh” less and 'um' more

There is something that seems dumber about an "uh" in that it leaves the mouth open where an "um" seems more polite. By "um"ing and closing the mouth you are offering more of an invitation for the other speaker to chime in. An "uh" seems to fill space even after it's over.

Good grief, this is empty even by the low standards of BBC science coverage. tl;dr Young people say 'um' more than 'uh.' Nobody knows why.

I find over use of "filled pauses" to be incredibly distracting. I'm always fighting for my focus with an internal dialog that's saying "just say it, or pause if you need a chance to think but stop saying um!". I should probably work on my patience and focus. But I always hope that people that overuse those filler words are conscious of it and putting effort into breaking the habit.

Another form of these filler words are the words/phrases "seriously, I'm not gonna lie, for real, actually, honestly, to tell you the truth". My take on it is, why would you lie to me in the first place? Should I assume you're lying if you don't say these phrases? They serve the purpose of gaining that extra millisecond to calculate the content of the proceeding sentence.

Reminds me of Paul Graham.

Perhaps this is because um is closer to the mystical sound om&#x2F;aum[1]?<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Om</a>

Am I the only one who is bothered by the fact that they used double quotation marks for &quot;uh&quot; and single quotation marks of &quot;um&quot; in the headline?