As the world marks World Emoji Day on July 17, Facebook measured the use of emojis in posts between April 4 and July 3, 2021, and revealed the most popular one used by Kenyans.
According to Facebook, the top overall emojis used are faces with tears of joy, love heart, and rolling on the floor laughing.
The popularity of Kenya’s used emoji is also based on food and drinks, age, and gender.
These emojis are most common in WhatsApp and other social media platforms when people comment or react to posts and stories.
The most popular food and drink emojis used by Kenyans include, birthday cake, aubergine (eggplant), shortcake, candy, and lollipop. Although Facebook listed the eggplant emoji on the food category, Kenyans, and perhaps people worldwide, use it to represent something totally different; the manhood.
When it comes to age, the most popular emojis in the 18-24 bracket include face with tears of joy, love heart and rolling on the floor laughing. Ages 25 to 44 mostly use face with tears of joy and love heart. The 45+ are mostly fond of the love heart, person with folded hands and face with tears of joy.
The love heart and face with tears of joy emojis seem to be popular in all age brackets.
By gender, globally, over the past three months, women created more posts containing emojis than men. In Kenya, face with tears of joy, love heart and rolling on the floor laughing emojis are popular for both men and women.
In addition to the emojis, Facebook Messenger is launching Soundmojis today.
Soundmojis is a new feature that enables people to send short sound clips in Messenger chat. People will be able to choose from a library of options that range from sound effects (crickets, clapping, drumroll, and evil laughter) to popular song clips.
Each sound is sent as an emoji (no words), keeping the popular visual emojis in play while bringing sound into the mix.
Although emojis are meant to be light-hearted and fun, some people frown upon their use as frivolous. However, it’s no doubt that they’ve made our digital communication richer and more precise. Happy emojing!?
