Emojis have earned a special place in digital communication, they allow users to express their feelings, moods, thoughts, and much more with illustrations. According to Unicode Consortium, the most used emoji of 2021 was the Tears of Joy 😂 and the heart ❤️ was the second most used character.
Out of the hundreds of characters, the Tears of Joy was used 5% all over the world. The report also reveals that the top 100 characters make up 82% of total emojis shared out a collection of 3,663 emojis, globally.
Top 10 emojis of 2021 worldwide
Most of the top ten emoji used worldwide are faces and only the heart, thumbs up, and folded hands were the other entries:
- 😂 – face with tears of joy
- ❤️ – red heart
- 🤣 – rolling on the floor laughing
- 👍 – thumbs up
- 😭 – loudly crying face
- 🙏 – folded hands
- 😘 – face blowing a kiss
- 🥰 – smiling face with hearts
- 😍 – smiling face with heart-eyes
- 😊 – smiling face with smiling eyes
Unicode also shared top icons from other subcategories.
- 🚀 Rocket Ship found in the Transport-air is symbolic of progress being made and anticipation of big changes.
- 💪 Flexed Biceps is the top Body-parts emoji (this subcategory excludes hands) and is commonly used to indicate strength, success, overcoming a struggle, exercise, showing off, boasting, or rolling up your sleeve to receive a vaccine.
- 💐 Bouquet of Plant-Flower for all occasions: congratulations, celebrations, and relationships of many varieties be they platonic or romantic.
- 🦋 Butterfly is the most common Animal emoji (found in the Animal-Bug subcategory) representative of change, beauty, nature, and transformation.
- 🤸 Person Doing Cartwheel may not be the most popular sport in the world but it is the most popular Person-Sport suggestive of happiness and joy.
Recently, Unicode released version 14.0 with 37 new emojis with 75 skin tones like the melting face, saluting face, face with open eyes and hand over mouth, dotted Line Face, face with the diagonal mouth, and others. It also includes new complexions like light Skin Tone, medium-light skin tone, medium skin tone, medium-dark skin tone, and more.
