Ask a woman, and she’ll tell you that punching a hole in a wall is juvenile, creepy, scary, and/or really unattractive behavior. Well, you know what we have to say to that woman? She is totally … correct. So we recommend that when you feel a need to punch a hole in a wall — and all of us feel that way at one time or another — you do it in private. (Or in front of a perp who you need to intimidate in order to find out where the bomb is hidden.) 
 
 We also recommend that you heed these tips in order to avoid punching a hole in a wall, and then pulling a broken, mangled hand out of said hole. 
 
 The Right Way To Punch A Hole in A Wall 
 
 1. KNOW WHAT YOU’RE PUNCHING 
 
 
 
 This is an excellent rule no matter what you’re punching — perhaps even more so when it comes to living things. (Man? Bear? Malevolent alien?) But even when it comes to walls, knowing your target can mean the difference between relative safety and painful injury. 
 
 For the most satisfying, least painful punching experience, you want your hand to go through a sheet of drywall (also known as wallboard or sheetrock), into a hollow wall cavity. Like smashing a prop beer bottle, it delivers all the satisfaction and spectacle with none of the danger. You get all the desired effects: venting and communicating your frustration, impressing children and simpletons, and feeling like you could bring the entire structure to the ground with your bare hands. 
 
 Also: Turn Your Wall Sockets Into USB Ports 
 
 To know what your fist will encounter, you need to know when your wall was built. The wallboard used in construction today was invented in the early 20th century, but did not become widely used until the post-war building boom of the late 1940s and 1950s. 
 
 NEXT: IF YOUR WALL WAS BUILD BEFORE 1946 … ||||| Sometimes people punch walls. 
 
 They punch other objects too, but it’s mostly walls. Walls are big, they’re imposing, and they’re almost always nearby. 
 
 But who are the wall punchers, and why do they do it? 
 
 Thanks to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), we finally have some answers. The CPSC tracks emergency room visits at about 100 hospitals each year; we took a look at all of the wall-punching-related visits from 2014. 
 
 In total, there were more than 1,200 patients treated in 2014 for injuries sustained while punching walls. As you can see in the chart above, teenagers punch walls far more than any other age group, and the most prolific wall punchers of all are 15-year-olds. 
 
 The CPSC dataset includes brief, anonymous descriptions of each hospital visit. Here are a the actual notes for some of the 15-year-old patients, lightly edited for clarity: 
 
 15-YEAR-OLD MALE WAS UPSET, PUNCHED WALL WITH FIST. UPSET W/ MOM WHO SAYS ROOM WAS NOT CLEAN ENOUGH 15-YEAR-OLD FEMALE AT HOME WAS ANGRY AND PUNCHED A WALL, CAUSING A PICTURE TO FALL OFF THE WALL, LANDING ON HER FOOT 15-YEAR-OLD MALE PUNCHED A WALL IN ANGER AFTER WASN’T ABLE TO SEE HIS GF 
 
 You may be wondering why the oldest patient on the chart punched a wall, but there’s no reason listed for the 69-year-old. It seems patients on the older end of the spectrum don’t really like to talk about what got them there: 
 
 48-YEAR-OLD MALE PUNCHED A WALL, DOESN’T WANT DESCRIBE SITUATION THAT CAUSED HIM TO DO THIS 
 
 It’s also worth noting that while most of the wall-punching in the data appears to be done in fits of rage, a few are just sporting accidents. Others are a combination of both: 
 
 36-YEAR-OLD MALE CAGE FIGHTER THREW A PUNCH & FELT WRIST POP. TOOK OFF GLOVE & SAW HAND SWELLING & THEN PUNCHED A WALL 
 
 Although many of these examples involve males, about a quarter of the punchers we found are female: 
 
 Wall-punching doesn’t seem to occur on any kind of seasonal basis. On average there were about 104 wall-punching incidents per month in the hospitals sampled, and they were fairly evenly distributed over the year. 
 
 While walls appear to be the top inanimate object, by far, that people punch—or at least the top object that lands punch-throwers in the emergency room—people sometimes punch other objects as well. Here are the other things they punch the most: 
 
 Notice that patients visited the emergency room on two separate occasions for punching paper towel holders. In case you’re thinking there must be some kind of mistake in the data, here are the descriptions of each: 
 
 16-YEAR-OLD MALE PUNCHED A PAPER TOWEL DISPENSER 15-YEAR-OLD MALE PUNCHED A PAPER TOWEL HOLDER AND BROKE HAND 
 
 For the sake of space, the chart above only includes items involved in multiple patient cases. But there were many other unique objects that landed punch-throwers in the hospital last year. Here are the descriptions behind just a few of those incidents: 
 
 A 15-YEAR-OLD MALE PUNCHED A PARKING METER LAST NIGHT, SPRAINED HAND 12-YEAR-OLD MALE HAD AN ARGUMENT WITH DAD, PUNCHED A THERMOSTAT 14-YEAR-OLD MALE, PAIN TO RIGHT WRIST, PUNCHED A FILE CABINET 17-YEAR-OLD WHITE MALE AT HOME, LEFT HAND PAIN AFTER [HE] PUNCHED A WASHING MACHINE 
 
 Notes on methodology: In the wall-punching data, we included records with “punched wall” or “punched a wall” in the visit notes. We intentionally excluded cases where patients “punched a concrete wall” and “punched a brick wall,” because we consider that an entirely different thing than punching some run-of-the-mill plaster or drywall. For the other objects, we programmatically searched for “punched x” and “punch a/an x,” and counted the objects that returned the most results.
– Walls do so much for us. And what do they get in return? Punched. After all, writes Keith Collins at Quartz, "Walls are big, they’re imposing, and they’re almost always nearby." Collins queried the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, which keeps tabs on annual emergency room visits, to find out more about wall punchers. Some of the major findings: More than 1,200 people were treated for wall punching-related injuries in 2014. Of them, 15-year-olds are most prone to punching walls. Men punch walls more than women (931 vs. 316 in 2014). Wall punching is consistent through out the year. Motives for wall punching range from anger, such as the teen angry that he couldn't see his girlfriend, and intoxication, such as the 25-year-old man who guzzled some brandy and tequila. A Reddit thread sheds more light on anger-pain-shame cycle of punching a wall: The rage is "blinding, like you literally can't see," writes one. Upon hitting the wall, the rage turns into "extreme pain, "followed by a little shame and embarrassment." Modernman.com offers a primer for wall punching, calling the practice "totally immature," yet "totally satisfying." One important tip: Don't punch a pre-1946 wall—lathe and plaster, after all, just doesn't break like drywall. Walls aren't the only inanimate object people punch, Collins notes, just the top one. His research found that people went to the emergency room in 2014 for punching windows, doors, dumpsters, lamps, paper towel holders, and a thermostat, among many other objects. Check out the data here.