On World Emoji Day, What Are the Most Popular 💖😍🔥🙏💀?

Plus, The New Crop Coming This Fall and the Emerging Generation Gap Among Users

Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life, a newsletter about navigating life's ups and downs. Every Monday and Thursday we explore family, health, work, and meaning, with the occasional dad joke and dose of inspiration. If you're new around here, read my introductory post, learn about me, or check out our archives. And if you enjoyed this article, please subscribe or share with a friend.

---

It’s been a big week in emoji.

First, Mark Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp, the popular messaging service with more than 2 billion users across 180 countries, would enable emoji reactions. Instead of just a handful of choices, all 3,633 emojis will be enabled. (PS: My fellow language nerds, if you’re interested in the backstory of how emojis became the standard plural usage for emoji, click here.)

Second, Emojipedia, the emoji reference website, released candidates for the Emoji 15.0 update coming this fall. The new choices include a shaking head, a goose, a moose, angel wings, and three new colors of hearts. Not all candidates are guaranteed to be approved by Unicode, the global standard for messaging, and even those that are approved will not be available on platforms.

Third, this year’s World Emoji Day (July 17) saw the award for best new emoji go to happy tears, followed by heart hands and melting face.

In my own family, emojis had a big week, too. On Thursday night, my wife, Linda, had a never-in-a-lifetime experience in which she interviewed the prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and the co-CEO of Netflix, Ted Sarandos, in front of 3,000 people in the 2,000-year-old Odeon of Herodes Atticus on the slopes of the Acropolis. The occasion was the 10th anniversary of the organization she co-founded and runs called Endeavor, which supports high-impact entrepreneurs in 40-plus countries worldwide.

At the end of a long, fascinating conversation (you can watch the entire interview below or click here), Linda asked both her guests a lightning round of questions. One of them: What’s your favorite emoji? (That part of the conversation is around 1:02.)

Sarandos, after saying he frequently used the 💘when texting with his wife, said: 👀.

Prime Minister Mitsotakis said: 😭.

That conversation got me thinking: What are the most popular emoji among all users?

Turns out that question is not as easy as you might think.

Emojipedia this week released its list through the first half of the year; it includes:

· Heart hands

· Red heart

· Melting face

· Face holding back tears

· Fire

· Sparkles

· Skull

· Smiling face with smiling eyes

· Face with tears of joy

But there are signs that different generations use emojis in different ways. A report in The National outlined some of the sources of this generation gap.

1. Fire 🔥

While millennials might use a heart or even roses to express their approval of someone’s post or picture on social media, Gen-Z may turn to the fire emoji for this, to say something is “hot,” “on fire” (not literally), “lit” or “turnt up.”

2. Eye-roll 🙄

Gifs of celebrities rolling their eyes is a common way of conveying sarcasm or moderate disdain, but not for Gen-Z. For ages 9 to 24, an eye-roll emoji indicates a “duh” moment, often expressing sentiments such as: “Yes, I know I am all that and a bag of chips” or “Why do you even bother asking?”.

3. Slightly smiling face 🙂

You might think this one is quite straightforward – if you’re a millennial, that is. Older folk tend to use the smiley face for its literal meaning, but it’s also often used to express awkwardness or discomfort in situations. For instance, when a friend texts you to apologize for being late, you reply with a “smile” to make them uncomfortable and to convey your building frustration.

The most contentious emoji in my experience is the laughing/crying emoji. One of my teenage daughters recently gave a talk in honor of a religious milestone in which she mocked her mother for using 🤣 to mean laughing-so-hard-you’re-crying. As one 15-year-old explained to CNN, "I stopped using it a while back because I saw older people using it, like my mom, older siblings, and just older people in general." For many Gen Z-ers, the better way to explain laughing is with the 💀, as in “I’m dead” or “I’m dying,” which probably explains how this emoji made 2022 Top 10.

Another controversial emoji in my experience is 🙏. For some, it means prayer; for others, it means thank you. For kids, apparently, it’s a hybrid of please, thank you, and I know I should have asked earlier, but you’ll do it anyway because you love me, right?

Whatever age you are, emojis are not going away. Since its founding in 2013, Emojipedia has analyzed 7 billion tweets over 10 years and found that usage continues to grow, with 2021 being the highest year ever. One in five tweets contains an emoji; 5 billion are sent daily over Facebook messenger.

So whatever your age, keep 😊 and be 🙏 that, for the first time since antiquity, the newest languages are made of pictograms instead of letters, so all of us have the same ability to be 😖 at the same time.

☀

Thank you for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, watch my latest TED Talk, or scroll through my other posts. And if you'd like to do a storytelling project with a loved one similar to the one I did with my father, click here to learn more.

You might enjoy reading these posts:

Relocation Nation: Why People Are Moving So Much And What It Means For America

Why There's No Such Thing As A Midlife Crisis

Can You Answer These 10 Questions About America?

Or check out my books that inspired this newsletter: Life Is in the Transitions and The Secrets of Happy Families.

Or, you can contact me directly.

---

Cover photo courtesy of Marcello Mollaretti via Canva