Quantitative data about emoji usage reveals the emoji we use the most.
Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit organization that maintains the Unicode Standard, the universal system for the numeric encoding of letters and characters so they can be understood across computer systems, revealed that the top three most popular emoji that we all use on out phones, these were:
- The joy smiley face emoji (conveys teary-eyed laughter), used a whopping 9.9% of the time.
- The red heart emoji, used 6.6% of the time.
- The heart eyes smiley face emoji, used 4.2% of the time.
Unicode also ranked the emoji in groups by median frequency, with the peach emoji ranked seventh in usage, along with the mind blown emoji. This data may be updated at any time, as new information becomes available.
According to Fast Company, Unicode Consortium chooses and regulates the symbols that appear on our phones. This week, the organization revealed 168 new emoji as part of its version 12.1 release, including symbols for a wide array of new animals, food, and activities—like a parachute, for all of the times you do that (or maybe just to hint when you need to escape a sticky situation). Unicode explained that it also considers user data as a key factor in the emoji selection process, including how people are using existing emoji. The new release also includes 138 gender-neutral forms and 75 variations of the holding hands emoji—made possible through new combinations of skin tone and gender—and more emoji representative of disability, like a hearing aid, prosthetic arm, seeing-eye dog emoji, and more. The new emoji will be rolling out to mobile phones starting this fall.
