According to Adobe’s 2021 Global Emoji Trend Report released on Thursday, 67% of global emoji users think that people who use emoji are friendlier and funnier than those who don’t. In addition, more than half of respondents (55%) said that using emoji in communications has positively impacted their mental health. Another stand-out finding is that 76% of global emoji users agree that emojis are an essential communication tool for creating unity, respect, and understanding. “I believe we respond more emotionally to imagery, and so, emoji can help approximate tone of voice, gestures and emotional reactions better with imagery than you can with words alone,” wrote Paul D. Hunt, Adobe’s typeface and font developer and the creator of the gender-inclusive emoji, in a blog post. “This is the potential strength of emoji: to help us connect more deeply to the feeling behind our messages sent by digital text.” The study also looked at the most popular emoji used today, and the 😂 came at number one among survey respondents. Other popular emoji include 👍 at number two, ❤️ in the third spot, 😘 in fourth, and 😢 as the fifth most popular. The survey took the results from 7,000 emoji users in the US, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, and South Korea and comes just in time for World Emoji Day, which is on Saturday, July 17. According to Emojipedia, there are 3,521 emojis, including symbols, flags, travel and places, food and drink, smileys and people, and more. The most recent emoji update has been rolling out to devices this year as part of Emoji 13.1, and brought a face spiral with eyes, a heart on fire, a face exhaling, and more skin tone options for couples with a heart in the middle.
