Researchers at U-M and Peking University analyzed 427 million messages from nearly 4 million smartphone users in 212 countries and regions to see if emoji use was universal or differed based on user location and culture. They discovered the most popular emoji worldwide is… face with tears of joy, which accounted for over 15% of total symbols seen in the study. It was followed by the heart emoji ❤️ and smiling face with heart eyes 😍. “Emojis are everywhere. They are becoming the ubiquitous language that bridges everyone across different cultures,” said Wei Ai, a doctoral student at the School of Information and one of the lead authors of the study.
