These are the most popular emoji characters of 2021

The most used emoji of 2021 across the globe is the character representing tears of joy — and aside from the red heart emoji, other characters don't even come close.

Tears of joy accounted for 5% of all total emoji usage, according to data collected by the Unicode consortium. As mentioned, the red heart emoji ranked second. After that, individual emoji usage fell off.

Other emoji characters in the top 10 included "rolling on the floor laughing," "thumbs up," and "loudly crying face," in that order.

The Unicode Consortium found some other interesting tidbits in its research, including the fact that the top 100 emoji account for nearly 82% of total usage. That's despite the fact that there are actually 3,663 individual emoji characters available.

Among individual categories, the rocket ship emoji ranked first in transportation, flexed biceps came first in the body parts category, and the butterfly is the most used animal emoji.

The least popular category of emoji happens to be flags, with country flags being the least-used subcategory. The Unicode Consortium points out that flags happen to be the largest category of emoji.

As far as changes over time, the tears of joy and red heart characters kept their top spots between 2019 and 2021. Folded hands remained in sixth place during that timeframe, though the other emojis have changed.

The Unicode Consortium set out to collect the data on a granular level to help it review new emoji proposals and add new characters.

"This data is a strong signal to encode fewer specific concepts like flags and less single-use objects like shower caps," the blog post reads. "And, instead focus on globally-relevant, well established communicative concepts."

13 Comments

charlesatlas 9 Years · 401 comments

About 3 years ago

AppleInsider said:

The Unicode Consortium set out to collect the data on a granular level to help it review new emoji proposals and add new characters.

Oh, brother. As if the more than 3600 existing emojis aren't already far too many. It's well on its way to becoming its own language.

elijahg 18 Years · 2842 comments

Surely the fact that the vast majority of emojis aren't used much proves there are already too many. But there will continue to be more because why would this "Unicode consortium" want to stop, thereby ending their own gravy train.

ackpfft 13 Years · 39 comments

I wish I could hide selected emoji so I don’t have to scroll past ones I never use like the Japanese symbols androgynous vampire.

mike1 10 Years · 3437 comments

ackpfft said:

I wish I could hide selected emoji so I don’t have to scroll past ones I never use like the Japanese symbols androgynous vampire.

Even just having a Favorites section would be great. Recently used is definitely not the same thing.

StrangeDays 8 Years · 12986 comments

elijahg said:

Surely the fact that the vast majority of emojis aren't used much proves there are already too many. But there will continue to be more because why would this "Unicode consortium" want to stop, thereby ending their own gravy train.

Can you cite your claim that the consortium members get paid for including new characters into the character set? I've read about the process in the past and never saw this. The biggest members are the household name vendors, but anyone can join it. You seem to be suggesting Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Google, etc are getting paid, but I don't see how that would be or by whom.

Most of the Unicode work has nothing to do w/ the emoji character set. They've been around for 30 years.

https://home.unicode.org/membership/why-join/
https://home.unicode.org/membership/members/

Are you sure you know what you're talking about? I don't think you do.