Buzz
In 2021, the 'tears of joy' emoji stood out as one of the most popular emotional icons.
According to Unicode Consortium statistics, the 'tears of joy' emoji is the most used worldwide, accounting for over 5% of all emojis used by social media users. Another commonly used emoji is the 'heart eyes' symbol.
The most used emotional icons in 2021 include 'rolling on the floor laughing', 'thumbs up', 'loudly crying face', 'praying hands', 'blowing a kiss', 'smiling face with hearts', 'heart-shaped eyes smile', and 'smiling face'.
These emotional icons haven't changed much in the past few years. 'Smiling face' and 'heart eyes' were also the top two emojis used in 2019. Some symbols even rose to new positions in 2021, making it to the top 10, like the 'thumbs up' or 'smiling face with hearts'.
The Unicode Consortium also categorizes emojis into smaller groups like smiley faces, people, clothing, animals, objects, food,... to observe which emojis are used most frequently. For event announcements, the 'party popper' is the most popular symbol, followed by 'balloon' and 'gift'.
To describe weather, fire is the most popular emoticon, while in terms of plants, the rose emoji leads. Both butterflies and rabbits are the most used emojis in the animal category. As for clothing, the 'crown' ranks as the top emoji. For food, the birthday cake symbol takes the spotlight, while the beer mug emoji represents drinks. In the fruit category, the strawberry emoji reigns supreme.
