The First Ever Emoji Report Reveals A LOT About What Your Country Texts
When we can’t say it with words, we express it with emoji. The creative communication crutches have been creeping into all avenues of our lives over the past few years — from calendars to cookies to music videos — and don’t appear to be loosening their grip any time soon. Hot off the iOS update release, featuring a more diverse emoji encyclopedia, keyboard app SwiftKey has released the first emoji report detailing what countries use which emoji the most. Yes, the results are fascinating.
In the first-ever emoji report, SwiftKey — which upgrades your keyboard to make it prettier and more efficient — took iOS and Android user data over the course of four months to learn and analyze how speakers of 16 different languages and regions use the tech talk helpers. After analyzing more than a billion pieces of data, the app company pulled out some amazing insights on how people communicate across the globe. Spoiler alert: Malaysians love their emoji, as they have been deemed the most emoji-savvy users with the largest emoji vocab. Check out some of our favorite results below! Sadly, no Bromoji made the cut :'(
1. The Emoji Top 5: The most frequently used — accounting for over 77% of all emoji used — are, in order: happy faces, sad faces, hearts, hand gestures and romance. High-five for mostly positive emoji leading the pack!
2. The Poop Emoji: While you and your friends may think you use this weirdly adorable number two piece of art the most, Canadians scored the highest in usage when it came to this brown little guy/gal.
3. The Heart Emoji: It only makes sense that those speaking the language of love — that’s French, FYI — use the heart emoji four times as much as any other languages. Sidenote: The French are the only ones who don’t have a smiley face as their number one most used conversation starter.
4. The Most Positive + Negative: Sorry, US, we aren’t the most positive emoji users (we’re not the most negative either though ;) Those distinctions go to the French with 86% cheery sends and Malaysians with the least positivity at 60%. Hey, at least the least positive users still are pretty positive.
5. Who’s the Sleepiest?: According to the report, those that need a nap the most (or at least are exhausted in convo) are Malaysians, who use twice as much sleepytime-related emoji than the rest of the countries.
6. Baby Crazy: Everyone loved babies. Especially when it comes to emojified tykes, as there was a three-way tie between US Spanish speakers, Latin American Spanish speakers and Malaysians. Yep, babies always win.
7. Male + Female Love: When it comes to using female and male emoji, Malaysian texters come out on top in both categories. They do have to share first place with Arabic speakers in the male category, however.
8. Pro-LGBT: Americans love a good rainbow emoji (among other LGBT-related options) and they use them 30% more than the average.
9. Indulge In Some Vices: Though you would think with the plethora of fast food joints in America, US users would reign supreme when it came to the things that aren’t the best for us, but you would be wrong. Australians use double the average amount of alcohol + drug-themed options and lead in both junk food and holiday pieces. Every day is clearly a g’day down under.
10. Top Face + Hands: You most likely use these categories the most, but do you use the most-used ones? For happy faces, the top four are joy, blowing a kiss, heart eyes and the standard smile. Every once in a while a sad face is required, the most used in that category are the crying face, fear, unamused and pensive. Who loves throwing in a hand gesture every once in a while? Everyone, that’s who. The leaders of that pack are thumbs up, okay, clapping and the peace sign.
Check out the full SwiftKey Emoji Report here.
What emoji discovery did you think was the most interesting? Let us know in the comments.