40 Crazy Facts About Emojis

Language is an ever-evolving factor in human communication. Our progress from Chinese hieroglyphs to emoticons in the previous decade to the constant use of emojis now has not been a fast one, but it’s certainly been effective. Now, any text sent without using at least one emoji seems like you’re either angry or rude.

That’s just how emojis have come to shape our world and with it, our means of communication. So on that note, here are 40 different, and some quite crazy, facts about emojis you need to know about.

1. 92% of people online use emojis daily.
2. The most popular emoji in the world is the laughing emoji ‘‘ followed by the heart emoji ‘’, and the pleading face emoji ‘’.
3. 78% of people believe using emojis makes you more likable.
4. 68% of professionals believe using emojis increases your credibility.
5. 57% of Instagram users put at least one emoji in all their posts.
6. Posts with emojis have a 31% higher interaction rate on Instagram.
7. Facebook posts experience a 57% higher reach when emojis are used.
8. Tweets with emojis have 25.4% better engagement.
9. Emails with emojis in the subject have a 29% open rate and a 28% click-through rate.
10. Emojis initially emerged from the country of Japan.
11. There’s an 85% better chance for push notifications to be opened when they have emojis in them.
12. 59% of consumers aged between 18-34 years think brands are overdoing it with their emoji usage.
13. Comments and shares increase by 33% when emojis are present.
14. MIT scientists report people can take up to 13 milliseconds to perceive visual content, making emoji an efficient means of communication.
15. Over 900 million emojis are sent through Facebook messenger alone on a daily basis.
16. 39% of senior managers in businesses believe emojis are unprofessional.
17. 15% of older professionals believe emojis are an effective way to improve workplace communication.
18. Reports show negative feedback shared with the use of emojis lessens the blow of the feedback.
19. 51% of people in a survey reported they’re more likely to interact with a brand’s content that uses emojis.
20. Studies show using emojis in casual conversation improves the overall positive experience of the conversation.
21. Finland is the first country in the world with Government-approved emojis, consisting of stickers specific to the country’s unique traditions and cultures.
22. Twitter has a special set of emojis attached to its hashtags, called hashflags, that companies can purchase for their commercial use.
23. Coca-Cola was the first brand to have used Twitter hashflags, back in 2015.
24. The thumbs-up emoji is considered obscene in many cultures.
25. 50% of employees see emoji-using coworkers as more approachable and friendly than coworkers who don’t.
26. 46% of millennials and Gen-Z think it’s okay to use emojis in emails and other communications.
27. As of September 2020, there are about 3,521 emoji characters in the Unicode standard list.
28. The original emojis used to take upto 18 bytes of data.
29. There is an emoji translation of Moby Dick.
30. Like any other informative site, there are now reference websites available for emojis that speak of an emoji’s meaning, origin, etc.
31. Shigetaka Kurita’s original emoji designs are now on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
32. Apple launched gender-neutral emojis in 2019.
33. Many emojis are used to raise awareness about social issues e.g. the first emoji  is used to represent BLM.
34. There’s a programming language, Emojicode, that allows programmers to write and run programs using emojis.
35. The water wave emoji, , takes inspiration from the Japanese painting The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Hokusai.
36. Over 10 billion emojis are sent through different apps every day.
37. An analysis of 31 million tweets and half a million Facebook posts show that emojis are a common factor in predicting social status and influence.
38. 70% of people believe emojis express their feelings better than words.
39. Since emojis are predicted by the brain as non-verbal information, we predict them as emotional communication, making them an easier way to understand each other.
40. There have been some lawsuits against the use of emojis. The most notable came in the shape of a couple having to pay $2200 for an apartment where the landlord complained they’d shown interest in renting it through their use of emojis. When the couple denied expressing any interest at all the landlord sued them for misuse of emojis. The judge eventually sided with the landlord, expressing the couple showed a great deal of enthusiasm and optimism in their text.

So these are all the crazy, weird facts we can report on emojis. There’s obviously a lot more to where this came from, considering how common and widely used this form of communication is becoming.

What’s your verdict on the use of emojis, either in casual conversation, businesses, or its relevance regarding the law?