Last week Instagram released an update in which users could search for hashtags with emojis in them. After all there is the say that a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Now there must have been a demand for emojis which is why Instagram released such a feature, and the company recently took a deeper look at the rising trend that is the emoji.
Basically they found that over the years especially since Apple released the emoji keyboard for iOS, use of the colorful smileys and icons have increased. This number continued upwards when the Android version was similarly released. When taking a look at which country used it the most, it turns out that folks in Finland were the heaviest users, using emoji characters in over 60% of their text messages.
Coming in second place is France at 50%, followed by the UK at 48% in third place. As for those in the US, they came in 9th place at 38% sitting below the likes of Japan who edged them out by 1%. Instagram also took a look at the most used emoji and found that the emoji with tears coming out of its eyes and with its mouth open was the most used character.
This is unsurprising as it represents common acronyms such as “lol”, “lmao”, “lolol”, and other acronyms used to depict laughter. While some might not think too much about these emojis, it’s certainly become a new way for people to communicate with one another although we’re sure there are some who might mourn the death of writing a perfectly crafted text message.